Class Bl^S^S. 
Book RS^K?) 
Copyright^ 0 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



EIGHTY-FOURTH BIRTHDAY. 



Four Score and More 



memorabilia quorum magna para fut 



PREPARED BY REQUEST 
OF MY FAMILY 



Geo. B. Russell, A.M., D.D., LL.D. 



author of 

"Creed and Custom of the Reformed Church/' Jesus in the 
Family, Saving the Children," "The Ripe Harvest," "Rev. 
N. P. Hacke's Work in the Greensburg Charge for 
58 Years," and Miscellaneous Works. 



Published by the Author. 

PHILADELPHIA. 

The Heidelberg Press 

1908. 



!5t 



UBRARY of OONia^Ei^ 
i wo oooies rtecejve* j 

1UH 4 W08 { 
copy a, J 



Copyright, 1908, 

BY 

George B. Russell. 



NOTE. — The Publishers are in no way responsible for sen- 
timents expressed, the accuracy of dates, facts, etc. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Introduction By Rufus W. Miller, D.D. 

CHAPTER I. page 
A Tribute to My Family i 

Four Score and More. Matters of Personal Mention. Narrative 
begins at Four Years Old. Antietam Home. Early Incidents of 
Coming Boy. Misfortunes Came to the Boy. Sad Removal to a 
Primitive Log Cabin. 

CHAPTER II. 

New Surroundings 16 

On National Pike. Cock Pit. Pony Post. Slave Drivers. Brutal 
Fight. Removal to Frederick. Hard Times. Murderer Hanged. 
Scenes in Jail. Proposed Orphans' Home at Frederick. 

CHAPTER III. 

At the Cove Gap 28 

Mountain Rambles. Reptiles and Animals Seen and Killed. Ratt- 
lers, Copperheads. Races. Runaway Slaves. Dogsi — "Watch." 
Removal to "Little Cove." Fishing. Hunting. Freedom. Joy. 
Good-bye to Childhood. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Enduring the Yoke 40 

Garret. Three Month's School in Three Years (9 to 12). 
"Boots." Sunday-school. Farm Work. Mystic Stirring of the 
Soul. First Wages. Trip Back to Cove, at 13. Accidents. Es- 
capes. Spared for What? 

CHAPTER V. 

Working Upward 52 

In a Store. Sunday-school Experience. Efforts for Education. 
No Time to Prepare at Mercersburg. 17 Weeks to get to College. 

At First no Plain Bible Promise. Voice of Sister. Studies. Self 
Boarding. 69 Cents a Week. Vacation Earnings. Mormons. Negro 

Singing in Mission Sunday-school. Dispute of Jew and Gentile. 



IV FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 

CHAPTER VI. page 
The Society Halls 65 

Building Operations. Goethean Hall Built First. Resolution of 
Diagnothians. "Five Foot or No Hall." Hall Funds. Freshman 
Vex Seniors. College Men. Dr. Thomas Apple's Letter on Early 
Times. Graduated, Second Honor. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Teaching in the High School 75 

Parochial Classical High School, Middletown, Md. In the Home 
of Dr. C. F. McCauley. Saved Drowning Child. Almost a Duel. 
In Harvest Field. Elected Tutor in ' Marshall College. Student in 
Seminary. Town Boys. Dr. Schaff's Naturalization Papers. Some 
Anecdotes. His Child's Catechism and Dr. McDowell. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Dr. Nevin . . . . 88 

His Kindness, Criticism and Notice of my "Creed and Customs 
of the Reformed Church." Dr. Berg Chastised. Going to Rome. 
Firmly Protestant. Brought out our Reformed Peculiarities Afresh. 

CHAPTER IX. 

A Vocation 94 

First Pastoral Charge. Sub-Rector. Preparatory Department 
for Newly United Franklin & Marshall College. Ecclesiastical 
Trial of Dr. S. R. Fisher. Led Toward the Ministry. Examined } 
October, 1853, at Philadelphia Synod. Sudden Call to Pittsburg 
Mission. Ordained, Feb. 13, 1854. A Trying Ordeal. A Big Ven- 
ture. Willing to Take the Yoke. Met New Friend. Pittsburg Min- 
isters. Impressions. Antecedent History. Dr. Harbaugh's Kind 
Letter. The Benevolent Conditions. A Member of Ohio Synod. 
Seven Members found to begin with, Jan., 1854. Congregation Or- 
ganized, May 13, 1854. Sunday-school Organized, March 12, 1855. 
A Choir Quarrel Helped. The New Church. The People Gave 
Noble Help. Funds Mainly Secured by Pastor. Over $8,000 of 
Funds Secured by Pastor in Laborious Canvas Through Churches 
Abroad. Dedicated Grace Church, December, 1857. Use of Litur- 
gical Service from First. Resigned after Eight Years. Elected by 
Ohio Synod to Edit the "World" (or Western Missionary). Dr. 
Higbee my Successor as Pastor, Jan., 1862. Church Sold after 50 
Years for $50,000. 

CHAPTER X. 

A Change 128 

Starting Out. Finding a Home. Married, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 
24, 1859. Greeting to Bride. Also at Silver Wedding. What the 
Mother Later Said; What the Child Later Said. Christmas Carol. 
Easter Hymn. Birthday Ode, aged 70. Poem at 82. Faithful 
Labors of my Helpmeet. Death of Younger Brother, Rev. C. Rus- 
sell (Black Small Pox). Preaching Efforts. 



CONTENTS. V 

CHAPTER XI. page 
Editing and Publishing 141 

20 Years as a Writer. Publisher of Review, 1858-1861. Review 
Contract. Dr. Schaaf's Letter. The Pastor's Helper. The First 
Sunday-school Paper in the Reformed Church. Transferred to East- 
ern Board of Publication. Named Changed to Treasury. Almanac 
Projected, 1864. Book Editor, by Eastern Synod, 1867. Collected 
$9,000 for Publication Board. An Editor with Dr. Fisher on "Mes- 
senger." Editorial, 1895-1899. The Board and Dr. Fisher. My 
Resignation. Editor and Publisher, "The Reformed Era," 3 Years. 
Before "The World" Was. Books. Ripe Harvest. Creeds and Cus- 
toms of the Reformed Church. Jesus in the Home. Saving the 
Children. Dr. Hacke's 58 Years' Work in Greensburg Charge. Four 
Score and More. 

CHAPTER XII. 

In Allegheny 169 

In Great Prosperity. Resigned to Obey Call of Eastern Synod. 
Trouble Followed in New Congregation. All at Sea for New Pas- 
tor. Church Died Without a Sign. Greeting to the Reformed 
Church in France. Union Movement. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The St. Paul's Orphans' Home 176 

How Bought? By Whom? All on Faith — No Money. First Pay- 
ment by me Personally to Mr. Siebert, April, 1867. Dr. Prugh's 
Letter. Address at Dedication of Home, Dec. 10, 1867. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

At Philadelphia 186 

Dr. Harbaugh's Plan for Books was Upset by Dr. Fisher. Get 
Funds for New Books. Profits and Income on Sales Would Make 
Others. All Income Absorbed in "Messenger's" Deficit. Old Debts 
Swallowed New Principal. Dr. Fisher's Plan Overthrew Book 
Scheme. Free Mission Work First Began in Delaware. First Re- 
formed Congregation Flourished by Personal Effort. Fell After- 
wards Into Bad Hands. Languished — Died. Sheriff's Sale. Mr9. 
Dr. Reilly Bought and Gave Back the Church. Regathered and Re- 
organized. 

CHAPTER XV. 

St. John's, West Philadelphia 196 

Peculiar Litigant Case of St. John's Reformed Church, West 
Philadelphia. Placed in Charge by Missionary Committee of Phila- 
delphia Classis. Long Court Trial to Regain Property. Revived 
and Re-organized with Nine Members. Property Sold by Sheriff 
for Opposition on Old Debt. Recovered Title. Received Vote of 
Thanks from Philadelphia Classis. Small Pox in the family. Resiy 
nation and Removal to West in 1871. 



vi 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



CHAPTER XVI. page 
Again in Western Pennsylvania 201 

Educational Projects. Bought a Fine College for $1,500. Empty 
Handed, paid for It. Others later let it fall into Debt. Sold After- 
ward, and less than $5,000 left in hand. Squandered to Help Lan- 
caster. Pittsburg College, to be. Scheme Killed. A True Detailed 
History of the Wilhelm Legacy. Grand Offer with Rich Promises. 
Halted and Tied up several times for years from both East and 
West. Two Versions of Facts. Sin and Piety. All for the Church. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
Other Work Grew 215 

The Reformed Era. — Its Birth and great Popularity. Absorbed 
by Plans of the Eastern Publication Board. Vain Promises. Elder 
Leonard's Letter. My prophetic answer came true. Peace Paper 
Modified before Passed. Advocated by me editorially in serial 
articles in the "World." These were approved heartily by opposi- 
tion leaders, especially Dr. Bomberger. Reformed Claim on Pitts- 
burg Church Property. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
My Fifth Mission 230 

Zion, East End, Pittsburg. By Personal work gathered funds 
and paid for new Church. Hiland Avenue. Left after Four Years. 
Congregation and Property in good condition. Classis, unwisely dis- 
solved the Zion Church to create the St. Luke's. Property Sold, 
and over 100 members lost. Humble Beginnings in what is now 
Pittsburg Synod. Was one of only four ministers in that part of 
Western Penna. in my early years. New Churches. Preaching in 
Kitanning. St. Paul's, Baltimore. Altoona material -first discovered, 
Latrobe, Pleasant Unity, etc. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
Corresponding Delegate and Formation of our General Synod . 245 

Delegate East, then West. Also First One sent to General Synod 
of the Dutch Reformed Church to renew former relations. My ad- 
dress to the Dutch. Efforts at Union. Conference at Philadelphia, 
1874, and later. Formation of our General Synod, 1863. Great De- 
bate at Dayton, 1866. Extremes of two Sides. Lack of Uniformity. 
Ursinus School of Theology. Then and Now. 



CHAPTER XX. 

At Washington 274 

Mixed Material Outside Bell Weathers Made Disturbance. Jar 
to Harmony and Success gives a set-back for 20 years. Bad Ef- 
fects of Special Committee. Protest to its work. Plain Statements. 
Resignation and Removal. 



CONTENTS. 



vii 



CHAPTER XXL page 
At Palatinate College . 293 

Call to be President. Found all in confusion and debt. First 
Two Years were gains and prosperity. Suffer by mistakes of the 
Board. Called Directors Sharply to Duty. Plea for good order 
Vindicated by official action and endorsement. Petty Jealousy. Re- 
action against law. Final Result — Resigned. Report of Bank Rob- 
bery. 

CHAPTER XXII. 



For Mont Alto 311 

Return to Waynesboro. Col. Wiestling. Old Church Repaired 
and Dedicated. Members grow from 28 to 109. Editor for C. G. 
Fisher, D.D., in cog. Projects and Work. Fires and Results. 
Supplies for Churches. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Some Appeal Cases 322 

Wingert's, Walck's, Shook's. Saved Parsonage from Sheriff Sale. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Appeal at the General Synod 328 



Reasons, set clear. Points on Church Law. Appeal sustained by 
overwhelming majority in my favor. General Synod against action 
of Potomac Synod, Ordering Mercersburg Classis to Review its first 
action. Fully vindicated. Now Forgive and Forget. 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Means of Living 341 

Not a Dollar by Inheritance. None gained by speculation, — all 
by rigid economy, care and . divine favor. Many years on small 
salary. Considerable service for years; absolutely free to different 
Churches. Required Careful Management, on an average $300 to 
$500 salary. Donated 888 Acres Coal and Iron Lands to Catawba 
College. Lease for same offered and refused at $18,000. Lost heav- 
ily also aiding brother. Calls and Overtures. Pious Germans in 
Rebellion. German Element in America. By German Leaders 



counted fair and trusty, for writing and speaking in their behalf. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Ecclesiastical Meeting 361 

Classes, Synods, Reformed Alliance. College and other Addresses. 
Antagonists held in Check. Grace to Forgive. Approvals. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Homeward at Four Score and More 369 

Medium Success only, — Nothing to Boa9t. Parochial Reports. 



Self-Prepared Monument. Enmities Halt at the Grave. The Rough 
and Hard is Blotted Out. Rest Come9 in Hope and Peace. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Frontispiece. George B. Russell, D.D., LL.D. page 

The Boy Eighty Years Ago. Painting the red hair and freckles. 

The artist said: "Sit up erect, you little rascal!" .... 29 

First Pastor Grace Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1854-1862. Per- 
sonally collected the building funds 101 

Grace Church, Pittsburgh, 1854. Sold after fifty years for 
$50,000 121 

Mated and Married 130 

Silver Jubilee— Whole Family 169 

First Pastor Grace Mission, Washington, t>. C, 1877-1880. 

Educator, Author, Editor, Publisher, 20 years 274 

After Winning Appeal Before the General Synod by About 
200 Majority 328 

Trek's End— Our Home 343 

Thou Wilt Bring Me to the "House Appointed" for all Living. 
Job 30:23 375 



INTRODUCTION 



The author of this book was called to his eternal reward 
January 5, 1908. The funeral services were held on Tuesday, 
January 7, 1908. Addresses were made by Rev. Edward O. 
Keen, pastor of St. Paul's Reformed Church, Waynesboro; 
Rev. A. C. Whitmer, D.D., Superintendent of Missions in the 
Reformed Church, Waynesboro, and the writer. Rev. F. F. 
Banner, Pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Waynesboro, 
and Rev. I. N. Peightel, Pastor of Grace Reformed Church, 
Greencastle, Pa., assisted in the services. The pallbearers 
were: George A. Wood, Chambersburg ; John H. Shook, 
Greencastle; J. J. Oiler, W. T. Omwake, Esq., J. H. Stoner, 
N. H. Gelbach, Daniel M. Heefner and Frank E. Grove, 
Waynesboro. The addresses of Rev. Mr. Keen and Rev. Dr. 
Whitmer are given at the close of this foreword. 

The manuscript copy of this book was placed in the hands 
of the printers in the Fall of 1907. Shortly afterwards Dr. 
Russell was taken sick and remained in such a condition that 
it was deemed unadvisable to have him see the proofs from the 
printers. But the life-long habits of the author were shown in 
his arrangements for the publication of this volume ; every de- 
tail as relates to the form and contents, the binding, and gen- 
eral appearance of the book, was provided for, in his usual 
careful and methodical way. 

The subject matter is a valuable contribution to the history 
of the Reformed Church and affords interesting glimpses of 
the conditions of life during the last three quarters of the 
Nineteenth Cenutry. The style is unusually clear and vivid, 
and the diction is peculiarly characteristic of the author. 



Xll 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



The writer in his funeral address emphasized the fact that 
Dr. Russell was a man with a creed, a man with a conscience, 
and that he was a man of courage. These features of his per- 
sonality are noticeable throughout the book. Men may differ 
from Dr. Russell in the interpretation of the facts as he pre- 
sents them, but all must give him credit for his sincerity, 
honesty and courage. 

It is the concensus of opinion on the part of educators, that 
the first fifteen years of one's life largely shape the future. As 
one reads the picture of the author of this book, depicted by 
himself, as to the conditions surrounding him in childhood, we 
see him a friendless little fellow, amid pinching poverty, with 
the fear of death thrust upon him at the age of four, and with 
elderly people who totally misunderstood him and mistreated 
him in the critical years between nine and twelve, when he 
was, as he expressed it, "enduring the yoke." The impress of 
these unfortunate experiences made its mark upon him for 
life, and explains his keen sense of justice, his stout main- 
tenance of his rights, and at the same time his obedience to 
the commands of his Church. 

Throughout life there was the manifestation of what Dr. 
Nevin phrased in criticism of his Senior oration — "bold, free, 
correct and independent thinking." 

The happy home life of Dr. Russell, following upon his mar- 
riage, is a beautiful tribute to the devotion and affection of a 
wife and loving daughter, and affords a glimpse of the real 
man. 

This is a book well worth the reading. It contains lessons 
of wisdom and instruction for young and old. It is enter- 
taining. It is inspiring. It breathes the spirit of faith and 
resignation. 

The life of Dr. Russell, as here set forth, is a splendid illus- 
tration of what a boy and a man, with meagre resources at 
hand, but with indomitable will and unwearied industry, and 
faith in God can accomplish. 



INTRODUCTION. 



xiii 



The mystic longings of the soul, awakened in Dr. Russell at 
the age of twelve, by hearing a weaver's apprentice sing : 

"Strive, get learning before you get old 
For wisdom is better than silver or gold." 

were crystallized in life long action and purpose of will. 

Dr. George Besore Russell was a great man. The Church 
which he served faithfully for so many years, and his friends, 
can be grateful that he has given in this permanent form, 
the record of a life lived in the fear of God and the service of 
men. 

Rufus W. Miller. 



Rev. E. O. Keen's Address 

Rev. Edward O- Keen, pastor of the St. Paul Reformed church, 
made the first address, using as his text, II Samuel 19 130 : "Thy ser- 
vant will go a little way over Jordan with the king." He said in part : 

If a comparison be not drawn too closely, these words and the person 
who spoke them will be found to be very suggestive at this time. Like 
David's friend, Dr. Russell lived to a ripe old age. Four-score years 
and three were the years of his life. It was a long life and it was, at 
the same time, an active, a useful, and a happy life. There were sor- 
rows and trials, difficulties and dangers, struggles and hardships, dis- 
appointments and defeats, but these never discouraged him. He never 
allowed his life to be overshadowed by vain regrets. Dr. Russell was 
an optimist. He did his duty as he saw it and to the best of his ability and 
then committed himself, his life and his work to God, assured that He 
would overrule that wherein he had erred and bless abundantly that 
wherein he had acted wisely and well. 

Therefore, the years of his life brought him many pleasures and joys, 
much peace and contentment. Even in old age we knew him as a bright, 
cheerful, happy man, old in years but young and vigorous in spirit. 

This friend of David was, as we have good reason to think, a strong 
man. His very name carries with it the idea of strength. Perhaps 
one of the things which most impressed even the casual acquaintance 
of Dr. Russell was his great strength. He was strong physically. Even 
in death he looked strong. His physical vitality was remarkable. lie 
R-2 



xiv 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



rejoiced in his strength. His was, however, not a vain joy. It was 
rather a joy tempered by grateful appreciation. 

Dr. Russell was strong intellectually. He was a man of parts. He 
was richly endowed mentally. The powers of mind which God gave 
him, he trained and developed by careful and vigorous and constant use. 
He might have fitted himself for almost any walk in life. He would 
have made a capable business man. He might have qualified himself 
for any of the professions. His impressive physical makeup, his great 
mental power, his interest in the human body, his sympathy with suf- 
fering humanity, the innate tenderness of his heart, would have served 
him well in the great and noble profession of medicine. He would have 
made an able and learned lawyer. He had a legal mind. He was one 
of the best and ablest interpreters and defenders of the constitution of 
his Church. He was particularly interested in the late revision of the 
constitution. If he had not been prevented, by physical disability, from 
attending the late meeting of the General Synod at Allentown, when 
the committee on constitution presented its report, his voice undoubtedly 
would have been heard with power. 

Those who heard him knew him to be an able and strong preacher 
of the truth. Even in old age he preached with seemingly unabated 
vigor and power. The last sermon which he preached from the pulpit 
of the church in which in these last years he was accustomed to wor- 
ship, was an able and forceful presentation of the truth. The worship- 
ing congregation could not fail to have been highly edified. 

Dr. Russell was strong spiritually. Two things, especially, served to 
develop his spiritual nature — prayer and the word of God. He had 
unquestioning faith in the power of prayer. It was the daily habit of 
his life. The Bible was his constant companion. His delight was in 
the law of the Lord and on His law did he meditate day and night. 
It was not, however, merely as a critic that he studied the Word of 
God; not simply as an exeget or a theologian or a literary scholar. 
These he was. It was, however, rather as a child of God, that he 
studied the sacred Scriptures, eager to know the will of the Lord. As 
he read the Holy Book he heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him, 
telling him what he needed to know in order to happiness and useful- 
ness in this life and blessedness in the life to come. I know of no fam- 
ily in which the sacred Scriptures were studied more faithfully and 
regularly, more systematically and continuously, than in his family. 
One of the most precious memories which this widow and daughter will 
cherish throughout life, is the many happy and blessed hours spent 
around the family altar in the study of God's Word and in pouring 
out their souls' longings to God in prayer, and in song. 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



Dr. Russell throughout the whole of his long life served faithfully 
his King, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, the King of 
Kings and the Lord of Lords. As a child, a youth and a man, as a son, 
a brother, a husband, and a father, as a minister of the gospel, an 
author, publisher, an editor, a contributor to religious periodicals, a 
teacher, a college professor and president, a delegate to the various 
judicatory of the Church, on the floor of Classis, of Synod and General 
Synod, the representative of his Church at different ecclesiastical as- 
semblies, denominational and inter-denominational, preacher and mis- 
sionary pastor, he was faithful in the service of his King, using the 
great powers of body, mind and soul of which God had made his 
steward. 

It is not my part at this time to dwell at length upon these aspects of 
life. I simply mention them and desire to refer to one thing which 
characterized him and determined his attitude in all these varied rela- 
tions and responsibilities of life. Dr. Russell was a man, who had con- 
victions ; but more, he also had the courage of his convictions. He was, 
therefore, a fearless preacher of the truth. He, indeed, portrayed the 
love of God with tenderness, he offered salvation to men in Jesus Christ 
with urgency, he presented the cardinal doctrines of our Christian faith 
and life with power but at times he was also a stern, a severe prophet 
of God, hurling his thunderbolts against sin and wickedness. Like 
Elijah, like John the Baptist, he was bold to rebuke the sins and vices 
of the day. But those who knew him best, knew that in all his severe 
and fearless denunciations of evil he was determined by his zeal 
for the truth and spoke from a heart filled with love, yearning for the 
salvation of immortal souls. 

Like the friend of David he was ready to go over Jordan to be with 
his King; unlike him, never more to return, but to abide in His pres- 
ence forever. Though his years were many, Dr. Russell was not weary 
of life, he enjoyed life; neither did he fear death; it was not to him 
the end of life, but rather the beginning of a brighter and a better life. 
He had a clear and positive conception of the reality of the spirit world. 
He had a true appreciation of its blessedness, of its joy, its peace and 
its glory and, therefore, when, on Sunday morning, the day of the Sa- 
viour's resurrection, bright with the sunshine from heaven, the call 
came to him, he was ready and his spirit gladly and willingly took its 
flight to that realm of glory made radiant and glorious by the pres- 
ence of the eternal Son of Righteousness. 



xvi 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



Rev. Dr. A. C. Whitmer' s Address 

The address of Rev. A. C. Whitmer, D.D., was of particular interest 
from the fact that he had known Dr. Russell in his boyhood days; 
"owed much to him," as he said, "for his first definite call to the holy 
ministry," and knew him well for many years as a fellow-worker in 
the ministry. 

Dr. Whitmer said : 

Eighty-three years of earthly life almost cover a century; and sev- 
enty-five years of activity and usefulness are allotted to few men. But 
this, in a word, is Dr. Russell's history. 

Growing up in a poverty of which he never was ashamed, he rose 
from obscurity to prominence in the church by virtue of real merit, for 
he was a man of unusual mental strength, of great force of character, 
of scholarly tastes and sincerely devoted to his particular work ; and it 
may be truly said that in reference to the general work of the Church, 
he often saw farther and deeper than most men of his day. 

Waynesboro, Pa., with its immediate vicinity, is noted for fhe re- 
markably large number of young men whom it has sent into the Chris- 
tian ministry; but let me remind you of the further interesting fact, 
that a large number of these men reached the ministry only througTi 
long self-denials and real hardships which year after year tried their 
faith and patience, while at the same time they helped to make them 
the strong men they afterward became. 

For example : George Besore Russell as a youth had before him the 
encouraging example of young Henry Harbaugh, and he was followed, 
not only by his own brother, Christian C. Russell, but also by men like 
the noble and lamented Joseph H. Johnston; and the story of these 
earnest lives should be an inspiration to all young men of the present 
day whose way into the ministry is hard. 

The story of the early struggle of Dr. Russell in getting an education 
cannot here be given in detail, and indeed the most painful features of 
it probably will never be written, but you can readily read between the 
lines and appreciate the reference. 

Perhaps it was this in part which always gave him great interest in 
young people, in their wants and struggles. He not only called young 
men to enter the ministry, but he also encouraged and helped them in 
their onward way. 

And also his writings were largely in the interest of the young. Many 
a helpful article he wrote for Dr. Harbaugh's monthly, The Guardian; 
and it was he who in the face of great hindrance in 1859 gave us our 
first child's paper, The Pastor's Helper, afterward called The Chifd's 



INTRODUCTION. 



xvii 



Treasury, which some years ago was merged into the western Sunday- 
school paper, Leaves of Light. 

Dr. Russell was a man of large and varied experience in the work of 
the Church and always gave himself heartily to the work in hand. In 
earlier life he was a teacher in the preparatory school at Lancaster, 
Pa., and then later he was a pastor ; but perhaps his largest field was 
that of editor and author. He was a ready writer. 

In 1867 the office of book editor was created by the publication 
board, to secure a distinctively Reformed Sunday-school literature, and 
Dr. Russell was the first and only incumbent. His service in this ex- 
perimental station was short, but active and fruitful, and afterward, 
for several years, his whole time was devoted to the weekly church 
paper, The Messenger. 

During this period he published a number of Sunday-school books, 
most of them translations, and in 1868 he published his own, "The Ripe 
Harvest," which was an earnest appeal for more ministers. 

Then a year, later followed his "Creed and Customs," a valuable ad- 
dition to our literature of that day, teaching our people what the Church 
is and especially what the Reformed Church is, a book which did much 
in developing our denominational consciousness, for it showed our 
people what a rich inheritance we have. 

And only a few years ago, out of the leisure of retirement, came 
"Jesus in the Home," a plea for godly family life in order to save the 
children. 

Then, too, through these many years of public life, he wrote not only 
hundreds of practical articles for the church papers, but also his weigh- 
tier articles for the Mercersburg Quarterly Review, in which he dis- 
cussed the deeper things of theology and of church government. 

But his largest and in some respects his most valuable book was fin- 
ished just a short time before his last illness, a book to which he gave 
much time and strength during several years and which he 
fondly hoped he might himself see through the press. Its title is, 
"From Four to Four Score." On the surface it is a biog- 
raphy, but in fact it is far more. It is an outline of tne 
leading events in the history of our Church during his long and 
active life, with his own valuable comments. He was a close observer 
of men and methods and principles and results, and he had a retentive 
memory and he himself took a leading part in much that was done 
during that specially important period of thirty years from i860 to 
1890; and so in this latest volume he was well qualified by large ex- 
perience and by a ripe judgment to state historical facts and to discuss 
the issues involved, as well as to tell us many interesting and important 



xviii 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



details concerning the leading men in these great events, the preliminary 
steps and the final outcome of movements which at the time gave earn- 
est men great concern for what might come to pass. And while it is 
true that with the death of Dr. Russell there passes away a great 'deal 
of church history, no doubt he has in this book recorded and saved for 
us much that is valuable, especially many personal recollections of the 
men and the work of the church of a generation long gone. 

But his busy life has ended, his work is done, the Lord has given 
him the rest that remaineth, and now it is for us to cherish his memory 
and to carry forward the work to which he gave so much of his life. 

Let me tell you yet one thing more, how a good man dies. When a 
man has lived a Christian life for eighty-three years, it is beautiful to 
go to heaven on a bright Sunday morning. 

Without a doubt the last three months of his illness were a real ripen- 
ing for his departure. Realizing that the end was near he often spoke 
of it with the greatest composure, indeed with joyful hope. It was as 
interesting then as it is comforting now, to notice how his mind and 
heart rested on the simple facts of the Gospel. He did not discuss the 
deep and difficult and perhaps doubtful things in theology, but his soul 
firmly grasped the articles of our catholic, undoubted Christian faith; 
and one day, after we all had joined in the Apostles Creed, he slowly 
and thoughtfully quoted the leading articles and briefly unfolded each 
one, apparently for his own comfort rather than for our instruction. 
And almost his last utterance of faith was, 

''A sacrifice of nobler name 
And richer blood than they." 

in which he was reaching for and laying hold of the soul's only 

hope, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; for, let 
me tell you, dying men do not and living men should not try to find 
comfort in abstruse uncertainties, but only in the clear assurance of 
Christian faith. 
So he died. So may we all die. Amen. 



Four Score and More 



i. 

A Tribute to My Family 

TREASURES of memory, like tried friends, are good for 
the use made of them. Gathered by a sort of dragnet 
through more than fourscore years and strung like beads on 
a thread, an exact memory holds the gems mainly in the order 
of their collection, as to varied size, color, shade, shape, at- 
tractiveness and common place fitness. From my store of 
such, this record is made, a loving tribute to my dear wife and 
daughter, the promoters of my health, happiness and home life 
peace. It may fall also into other hands and strike a spark to 
mellow their shaded way. 

This book as such, is in no need of preface or fore-word. 
It makes no apology for its appearance; and its existence is 
its own plea for being here. It is not for pecuniary profit or 
speculation — nor is it foisted on an unwilling public as a tax. 
But yielding in sheer good nature to their requests, it were in- 
deed rude to have refused the wishes of my friends. It is 
therefore simply made the occasion for grouping together for 
their reference, without art, plan, or scheme, some gossip and 
history ; and making some needful corrections of other people's 
mistakes; while also tenderly affording perhaps sweet recol- 
lections along with snatches of story in homely picture of the 
boy, the youth, the man, the worker and the old servant not 
yet called to his sunset rest. 

Room was of course intended to be left in this old style 
carry-all for stowing away a few bits of fossil, or packing in 



2 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



a childhood's withered flower, or some nuts taken from the 
boy's native woods and storing occasional historical pictures 
kodaked here and there for keeps. But far too many old, 
quaint and curious things were calling to be crowded in, until 
a goodly portion had to be forcibly dropped by the way. Others 
perhaps had better found no place at all. In the "Potomac con- 
glomerate," which at the "Point of Rocks" furnishes the rock 
for the homemade columns in the Statuary Hall of the Capi- 
tol at Washington, the polished surface reveals to the appre- 
ciative eye all sorts of ideal human figures and aesthete de- 
signs. So may these "men and things" bring out delights for 
home reading. The results, perchance, may be like my moth- 
er's selection of river-bottom pebbles. In her old age, while 
visiting us at Pittsburgh she went out at low stage of the river 
and saw in the water-washed bed where the Allegheny and 
Monongahela form the Ohio, many curious, smooth-worn 
stones, pebbles of various sizes, colors and forms. One after 
another chosen for beauty or oddity was taken into her collec- 
tion; some were rejected afterwards for what in others seemed 
preferable. When the whole mass of the many that were re- 
tained was finally brought in and spread out to view, some of 
the collection were thought to be no better than many speci- 
mens that had been left in the river bed. Thus it may be found 
here, that what is laid up is only common and hardly worth 
the keeping. Of these records perchance some which appear 
worthless should have been stricken out along with much else, 
instead of what you might wish had not been ousted or left for 
burial in kindly forgetfulness. If that be an error of judg- 
ment, the fault is mine and not misstated facts. 

Perhaps this book is something like grandmother's pie, made 
of course for the whole family, rather than for any individual 
taste. She had a full dozen children to satisfy, and her chosen 
ingredients were so mixed that the result would have to be 
suitable for the average taste — not for the single preference 
of each — and all would alike share in the family compound. 
What was put in and what was left out, made a fair and happy 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY. 



3 



compromise. Now, if such successful judgment rules in what 
has here been used, it will in so far be to me satisfactory. 

This family offering, while intended mainly as a private 
tribute, may also incidentally serve as recording some data 
for the use of the Church some day in making up history. 

These memorabilia are supposed to have indeed general 
value. And though all is meant in kindliest mention of fact 
and anecdote, perhaps some of it rubs the cat's fur the wrong 
way. Yet there could not be found as true to life, the same 
facts in any other known authentic reference book. Much 
pity it is that other real historical matter of this living period, 
is not found preserved in better shape as showing our last 
century's life and growth. What was planted then is now 
growing for faith to reap. 

Grand controversial periods were in those eighty years, 
within and without the Church. , The German language in the 
public worship changed largely to English, a hard trial. The 
Anxious Bench fell before the restored Catechism. Creed and 
Sacraments were examined and affirmed. Cultus, general 
people worship, came to the front, customs and laws upheld 
in the Church, missions, institutions planted and fostered. All 
these felt the healthful results of the late bitter ecclesiastical 
wars. The Church, through these rose to fuller mastery and 
steady consciousness of its life. It produced distinguished 
men, preachers, teachers, elders and people of heroic mould. 
Let the historical material of every form be embodied in rec- 
ords well digested, or chiseled in enduring marble. 

FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 

Four score years, sweeping back in vigorous memory with 
clear vision, join me to the child of four. Undimmed twilight 
of declining day holds yet for me the far reaching cord of liv- 
ing associations binding the present to the receding years, in 
an unbroken span that touches the horizon of both my morn- 
ing and evening sky, at this point of age and at childhood's 
conscious dawn. Grace, mercy and peace find me at this 



4 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



eighty-fourth birthday red-headed still; not indeed as once to 
the boy a mocking reproach, a deep affliction, with the abund- 
ant freckles which have long since faded out. Now among 
old people, the narrowing circle is fast thinning out. Life's 
work still incomplete is proof of "vanity." Valued friends of- 
ten requested me to set out in order some memories running 
from early days and connecting the approaching end. This 
takes in "men and things" in the long pathway. Sentiments, 
facts and experiences, ingrained in boy and man — since the 
first quarter of the preceding century, can thus be given as 
history with only small personal reference. 

These memorabilia, gathered and crudely clothed in homely 
garb of common story, shall have at least one merit; that of 
being actual rather than ideal. Thus, in so far, better than 
fine fiction. To have some one else to speak for you, telling 
of things good and true, were much better than to be called to 
do it yourself, like some vain person blowing his own horn. 
Necessity here is my excuse. 

Job's friends, though meaning well, did not minister much 
to his advantage, because they did not fully know his case. So 
they fell far short, and rather helped to increase his misery. 
Hence, he had to take his own case in hand and speak for 
himself, wishing finally that bis enemy had written the book. 
Recorded facts by a third party are generally lifted above per- 
sonal feeling. The man however without such a helper, must 
do the next best thing. Sure of the third party, there are usu- 
ally enemies enough to tell the other side of the story ; and 
there is a woe divinely pronounced against you when "all men 
speak well of you." Even David found antagonists in great 
plenty who were "lively" compassing him about as buzzing 
bees — but that only held him up to the task of making a good 
mark for the test of his life. 

An enemy's book may perhaps lack the accuracy of state- 
ments, and its unfriendly animus is likely to give a wrong bias 
requiring material correction of both gloss and facts. But 
most of all beware of unrecorded reports and damaging ru- 
mors. 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY 



5 



In history no personal story should be put astraddle even 
when correcting what enmity, prejudice and falsehood has 
warped. Writing a book, however, about one's self, the same 
in spirit and in truth as for your nearest friend, when the 
points are far enough away from the present by more than 
half a hundred years — if softened by the mellowing effect of 
time, may be almost as free from personal unfitness, as if it 
had been written by a third person. That is intended to be 
the case here. 

Many of the small matters thus set down may be devoid of 
interest to others. But the little things and common incidents 
as accessories in art will show at least to family friends, what 
were the moving powers moulding a small boy's early life, and 
intoning manhood's years. Take these away and give some- 
thing else of different kind — then the character and history 
would be changed. Education in social relations, politics, re- 
ligion, study of "men and things" tinges the whole story. Tell- 
ing of long ago, too, makes it seem as if belonging to some 
other person rather than to the narrator. 

Hence it must not be offensive to speak of one's self in such 
connection as is here necessary to give what lies far back in 
the former century ; which softens objectionable personal ref- 
erences. Some avoid the personal pronoun, mentioning only 
"the writer." This seems far-fetched and is not more modest. 
What is therefore here recorded in the first person, you may 
set down to the old man's privilege. It is not possible even 
in this way, to cure all slipshod history. Correction of a few 
cases was offered once to be made in our church paper, where 
the falsehood wronged history decidedly. But the astute edi- 
tor refused on the plea that it would lead to confusion to up- 
set the record and destroy confidence in the "organ." As if 
there were any real confidence to destroy. Who can in future 
make authentic history out of untrustworthy data? One 
Board officially goes wrong five years about my first church. 
A special publication prepared at an editor's request belies the 
record of my work ten years. More than a fourth was cut 



6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



out of my personal labor in building Grace church, the first; 
which made it possible to sell at a large profit, and then build 
a prouder second one — and a whole lot of such false records. 

A church historian, for instance, tells you in his book that 
my brother died in the State of New Jersey, when the fact is 
he had never spent a whole day in that State, actually dying in 
our house in Philadelphia, and he was buried in the Glenwood 
cemetery, near the main entrance and nearly opposite to the 
upper gate of the Laurel Hill cemetery of that city. Also as 
delegate to the General Synod in the official minutes the fact 
is entirely omitted, and the stated clerk begged privately to 
let it lie. Likewise many other false records could be men- 
tioned. 

Our story will try to justify its own records, as if made by 
a disinterested person. This will give you perhaps a sort of 
miscellany. Probably you never saw such unclassified state- 
ments in a printed book. It all stands without studied scheme* 
or plan; only aiming to give the raw material rather than a 
fancy-drawn picture. It has no plot, follows no model, and 
just runs on in its own way. If it be after no known type, it 
yet seeks to be natural and true to life. Any one reading 
here, if not finding what is liked, is at liberty and welcome at 
any point to lay down the tale. But if some valuable facts 
and data be wanted, which are not found elsewhere of record, 
then "look within." No man can write any part of good his- 
tory of our Church in the last century, without large refer- 
ence to what is herein set down. 

Though not now in the active pastorate, scores of occasional 
sermons and other ministerial services fill up the later years ; 
besides frequent contributions to the several church papers 
and years also in the Frick directory reshaping its finances, 
etc., whose annual business is over a million dollars, — all lie 
this side of the "deadline." 

As to general health, or the lack of it, nothing reminds him 
scarcely of a heart, or lungs, or liver, or kidneys, or nerves. 
Hale and hearty, yet with not a wrinkle in the face due to age, 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY. 



7 



body of full weight, nearing one hundred and eighty pounds, all 
traces of boyhood's freckles faded out, complexion clear, appe- 
tite moderate, digestion good; he is often taken at a dozen 
years short of the right number for a "well preserved man for 
his age." Hair originally real red, still mainly showing plain 
tinges of color, except that the beard is more bleached so that 
the town children at Christmas cry, "Here comes Santa 
Clausf" Eyes, with aid of good glasses, are equal to a full 
day's reading. Voice clear and ringing in the pulpit and with 
power to speak and read aloud for hours and sing heartily in 
worship, as when young. A majority of the teeth are held by 
natural inheritance, not bought in store lots. Taste is keen, 
smell accurate, hearing somewhat dulled, touch sensitive. 
Muscles vigorous, limbs free from extra aches, walking ca- 
pacity for miles, sleep regular in a good night's rest. For 
these and manifold other blessings, known and unknown, 
and for the assurance of Eternal Life, thanks be to Almighty 
God, in Jesus our Lord! 

THE NARRATIVE. 

This story begins here with what concerned a friendless 
little fellow who had early to learn enough in hard experience 
amid pinching poverty, to bear with stoic fortitude, pluckily, 
the ills and sorrows that fell to his lot. We become what we 
are by the plastic power at work already in childhood and 
youth, while forming types of habit for the man. Later ad- 
verse circumstances can be somewhat held in check and modi- 
fied. What seems all unmeaning now, was perhaps of fullest 
force to turn the life course, fix the mode of thought, set the 
bent of will and form the rule of action for practical results in 
the outcome of one's life. To bear the yoke and learn to en- 
dure hardness in youth makes the after man. 

Both of my grandfathers had large families. On the one 
side were eight children, and the eldest of the two boys was 
the father of this subject. The mother's side was a family 
consisting of twelve children, nine sons and three daughters. 



8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Of these, mother was next to the eldest, born February 23, 
1794. Her father's name now written Besore, was earlier Bas- 
ore, Basehore, Bayshore, Bashaar — just as the ship captain or 
English neighbors pronounced or wrote it. Originally of Hu- 
guenot family, it was doubtless Basieur. They were long lived 
people, mostly running over the Bible age of threescore and 
ten, reaching fourscore and upwards — to 81, 83, 85, 88 and 
92, which last was my mother's age, within six weeks, at the 
time of her death. 

My parents, married in 181 7, were Christian Russell and 
Catharine Besore. Her grandfather gave name to the Besore's 
Church (now Salem) three miles west of Waynesboro, Pa., 
where his remains lie buried in the adjoining graveyard — not 
to be dug up as our grandfather's were by Trinity congrega- 
tion, Waynesboro, for mere speculation by the consistory for 
making town lots. Our paternal grandfather lies buried safe- 
ly for the last 100 years at Hagerstown. He died 1807. The 
family were members of the Reformed Church in past genera- 
tions and generally remain true to the calling. 

There were six children in our family : three sons and three 
daughters. My younger brother was early intended for the 
ministry. He became Rev. C. Russell, ordained 1858, died of 
smallpox at our house in Philadelphia, November 17, 1871, 
and was buried in Glenwood cemetery on a nice lot near the 
main entrance from Ridge avenue. The older brother was to 
have been a farmer, but he learned the tinning and copper- 
smith trade. By the same family plan, the second son should 
have become a lawyer — for which others also have judged him 
to be best fitted by nature. He was baptized in infancy by Rev. 
F. A. Scholl, and at seventeen was confirmed by Rev. Dr. J. 
H. A. Bomberger, Waynesboro, Pa. The candidates for that 
rite were first put through a union "revival meeting" and then 
attended three or four lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. 
This was in the days of "New Measureism," when some Re- 
formed ministers were carried along with the popular tide. 

Grandfather John Russell, tanner, removed 1796 from Ber- 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY 



9 



lin, Somerset county, Pa., where our father was born, two 
years before, to Hagerstown, Md., having exchanged his tan- 
nery in Berlin with Baltzer Knoll for a similar property in the 
suburbs of what was then called Elizabetbtown. Thence he 
removed 1807 to a farm and mill property on the Antietam at 
Leitersburg, Md. This homestead was a part of the "Well 
Taught" tract, so called in the old deed. There he soon after 
died suddenly from pneumonia. His oldest son, my father, 
after reaching his majority, bought the paternal place from the 
other heirs; and in a few years attained reasonable compe- 
tency. He was considered a man of fair business parts; but 
too soft-hearted and impulsive to be financially successful. His 
good nature was taken advantage of, and he was imposed upon 
by parisitic friends and relatives who obtained from him be- 
sides gifts of value, also heavy endorsements, which in not 
many years stripped him of all his earthly possessions. 

Born at the old red mill, now called "Strite's," on the west 
bank of Lie Antietam opposite Leitersburg, Washington 
county, Md., August 18, 1824, my earliest recollections are still 
vivid of that once happy home. My childhood's sweetest mem- 
ories are of that stream's beautiful winding course around the 
meadow fringed with willows, and its limpid waters reflecting 
the trees and sky. The brightest clouds floated leisurely to- 
wards the east, the sunsets were the most glorious, and the 
clear evening starlight gave placid peace to the heart. The 
waters of this stream twenty odd miles further on, in the Civil 
War times, were crimsoned with blood, where General Mc- 
Clellan won a turning Union victory at the battle of the Antie" 
tarn. The headwaters flow from thirteen springs in the Mount 
Alto Park in the South Mountain of the Blue Ridge, now a 
State forestry reserve, not many miles north from my early 
home. Near the park with the several streamlets joined, I 
have with one long stride stepped across the baby stream; 
which however soon grows from other mountain and valley 
affluents to quite respectable magnitude, before its waters 
above Harper's Ferry join the Potomac. 



IO 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Dating from my fourth year, among other things clearly 
remembered of the now historic Antietam, are the boatings 
with an uncle around the meadow bends in the dam above the 
mill ; and net fishing parties, in one of which, mounted on a 
man's shoulders the little red head was ducked quite under the 
water. At the breast of the dam once a crippled uncle "fell 
head over heels" into the deep water below, and sank out of 
sight. My alarmed cries for help brought an aunt from the 
house who asked, "Is he drowned?" and the answer was, "Not 
quite — one foot was the last of him that went under the 
water." Soon, to our great joy, we saw him alive clinging to 
the logs below the water fall at the overflow of the dam. 

While playing one day in the meadow, we children heard 
the warning cry of "Mad dog," and all ran for the house, 
while the frothing beast was heading in our direction. The 
crack of "Jim Nofford's rifle" stopped the dog and quelled 
our fears. The melon patch and orchard were tender places 
in those years. Of Leitersburg itself, a poor little straggling 
town, even yet memory has some distinct pictures. One of 
these is the Union church built in 1826 and held for years 
peacefully in common by the builders, Lutherans and Re- 
formed. Since then it was gobbled by the Lutherans and 
claimed entirely by them "because, though built for a union 
church, yet at the cornerstone laying only one Reformed min- 
ister took part while three others were Lutherans"; and no 
original writings were found to show the "union" ownership. 

There our family attended divine service, which before this 
union house of worship was built, had been at the Besore's in 
Pennsylvania, or at the Beard's church, in Maryland. My first 
remembered funeral was of a Sunday-school scholar. He was a 
little boy, not much larger than myself. "As young as we he 
died," they sang; and the awful mystery of death while we 
were at the grave became a terror from that day forward for 
long years. 

One day the little red head went with other children to the 
old log school house at the foot of the hill below the town on 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY 



II 



the Hagerstown road. There was close by a frozen over pond> 
and the "school master," a savage looking man, forbade the 
boys and girls going on the ice to slide — they had at that day 
no skates. During the noon recess the pond was crowded with 
hilarious sliders, so that when the teacher was seen coming 
down the hill, they all broke pell-mell for the school house 
door. Jostled back by the stronger ones, the only safe thing 
for the little stranger to do was to strike off for home in a 
blind fright along the path leading over the dangerous "foot 
log" crossing of the Antietam — without falling into the water. 
The searchers sent after the much scared four-year old school 
visitor found him secure enough beside his mother in the 
family room at home. That first day at school was not a bril- , 
liant educational success, but a sample of the times. 

Another thing remembered of that same fourth year's ex- 
perience was an impressive lesson of "mine and thine." Mother 
had taken the little chap along in visiting a friend in the vil- 
lage, where the afternoon was pleasantly spent in company. 
On the way home she heard something rattling in his new 
pocket of which he was so proud in his first pants. Investi- 
gation brought to light her friend's bright steel needle case 
which had been handed him as a plaything to entertain him in 
the tedious hours of the matron's friendly visit. A plain ex- 
planation followed, and a decided reprimand for taking any- 
thing that was not given him for "keeps." This is not always 
apparent to children until taught some nice distinctions as to 
ownership of property. 

He was told of the wrong to take what is not given for 
one's very own, a point in morals not known before, and then 
and there the lesson of instruction was sealed in a manner 
never to be forgotten, by requiring an immediate return to 
restore the property and asking pardon. Ignorant transgres- 
sion must however suffer as the Master says, though it be 
with few stripes ; while willful disobedience shall be beaten 
with many. The little boy's mistake was made with no inten- 
tion whatever tp dp wrong, 
R-3f 



12 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Those early years at the mill brought also sickness, and 
mine, "the yellow janders," was nigh unto death. Many times 
since, it was my regret that it had not been my time then to 
have died. But it was not, and it had its lesson. The first 
"Old" Dr. Oellig, of Waynesboro, was the family physician, a 
popular and successful cure-all. He had among other sharp 
intuitions, successful ways of humoring children. In order 
to induce me to take his unpleasant medicines regularly, he 
promised to give me, if soon made well, "a nice little hoss," 
a most desirable thing, and the repulsive doses were bravely 
taken. But no nice little "hoss" came. When the doctor again 
came to treat another of the family, he was promptly challenged 
to make good his previous promise. Assuming a sorrowful 
air, he said "a big katz" had eaten my little horse; and then 
producing a battered fi penny bit, the smallest silver coin then 
in use, which was chewed and eaten, that was all that re- 
mained after an examination had been made of the defunct 
big cat. This was to be kept in memory of the promise. Chil- 
dren, till deceived, take people at their word. God grafts on 
that power of faith. 

Most little folks wish to grow big at short notice. This at 
least is a harmless common weakness. When the boy Joe was 
ordered to take a certain piece of iron to the smithshop to have 
it "stretched," the little redhead set up a strong plea to be 
taken along. As it did not suit at the time to grant this, the 
refusal nearly broke his heart. Questioned as to the fretting 
cause it came out that his desire was to have the blacksmith 
treat him as he was to do with the iron, and "stretch out" the 
little fat legs till they would be as big as a man's. It was a 
nice piece of instruction that followed from a patient mother 
to show that a boy's legs must have their own time to grow, 
and that the fires of the blacksmith and his hard-hitting ham- 
mer, even if it could do for me what he did with the iron, 
would bring great pain and suffering ; which was not necessary 
if a boy only waits patiently God's time to make one big. That 
truth, though obvious, was a disappointment then, but its les- 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY. 



13 



son has since been of much service for enduring faith, in 
many things that try our hearts while waiting the Lord's time. 
Jacob and his mother mistook this in hastening to possess the 
birthright. 

Another experience by the end of that year — something 
gratifying to many a boy, was the first ride on horseback. Ours 
was on a gentle family horse. High spirited indeed, and of the 
proudest blood. When an unskilled rough rider mounted her 
and handled her unkindly, there was likely to be a contest be- 
tween the 'horse and the rider for the will mastery, in which 
the sorrel not always came off second. But it was said, if a 
woman or a child were in the saddle, she was generally docile 
enough and with her proud neck arched, her silky ears alert, 
and her quick eyes set like faithful sentinels, with unerring 
step, she could be trusted like a pet dog. That was "Baldie 
the Beautiful." They put my older brother and me on her bare 
back once to go to the pasture field after a rain shower, to 
bring in the cows. Just then, however, the mare cared more 
for her foal left in the stable than for the bundle of two such 
green boys ; and the very next thing to notice, by a sudden side 
turn, were two surprised children tumbled all on a heap in the 
straw of the barnyard, where she quietly dumped them to re- 
gain the stable door. The older brother of course had charge 
of the reins. Many times afterwards it was my good fortune 
to ride her alone. Another experience was to ride "on be- 
hind" a hunter who usually shot squirrels on the high trees 
from his seat in the saddle, while the little chap snuggled 
closely to the coattails, or to the croup of. the saddle. 

Some of the most delightful rides on horseback for us in 
those years were behind our mother when she took occasional 
trips to grandfather's place about five or six miles away. To 
incline backwards in an almost horizontal line while holding 
to the saddle cloth, and looking up see the clouds, the fields, 
the fences and the trees seem flying by, was a most wonderful 
fascination— the illusion that we were not the objects hi mo- 



14 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



tion was most complete. The same thing can be occasionally 
noticed from a gliding boat. 

A lone, long ride on horseback once was made in my ninth 
year. A young horse was to be delivered to an uncle, a singing 
school teacher, some twenty odd miles distant, over a strange 
and unfrequented back country road. It was to me an un- 
known way in a strange land; riding one horse and leading 
another. A recent freshet had swollen the streams and the 
ford of "back creek" was deep, the current rushing wildly, 
the horses had to swim, while the young rider's feet were 
drawn up and crossed on the horse's back. It was a blind 
venture, but happily the crossing was safely made, with no 
accident, else this might not now be written. Carriages were not 
in general use in this country in the early part of the last cen- 
tury. Distant trips to the far west, and also rides for pleasure 
nearer home, or for general business were usually made on 
horseback. Our parents went to church in that way. The 
father had a pillow or a pad in front of his saddle, on each side 
of him he held one of the children, while the mother held the 
babe in her arms, and the largest boy clung to her from be- 
hind the saddle. Thus six of them went to church on Sunday, 
or to visit friends. At a wedding where mother was bride's 
maid, she used to tell us, twenty-three couples on horseback 
went to the "infair." 

In (the fall of 1828 hard misfortune befell the family, and we 
had to leave our early happy Antietam home. Everything was 
swept away by the ruinous losses of "bail money" for which 
the sheriff's sale, was made. In utter poverty, we were re- 
moved then to a small house, or primitive cabin, rented tempo- 
rarily for a lodging. It was along the road crossing the "Ma- 
son and Dixon" State line a few 'miles from the old home. 
Even here stern officers followed the broken-hearted debtor 
and dragged him to the courts again for debts not made foi 
himself. The dark cloud of adversity began to thicken and 
settle down upon us, till the early morning of prosperity was 
obscured and entirely hidden. The old place has long been in 



A TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY 



other hands. The kind providence permitting the change has 
not yet revealed all that was in the disaster, though it was 
surely a well meant blessing. But the Lord has not withheld 
His mercy and kindness from those who sought to know and 
do the divine will. We have been kept alive and our bread 
and water, at times none too plentiful, rather scanty indeed, 
were always sure. 



II. 



New Surroundings 

THE primitive log cabin into which the family moved 
sheltered us for the following winter. In the spring, 
the family took charge of a public house on the great "Na- 
tional Pike." This was also near the Antietam, which is here 
much wider than where we had known it before ; but its banks 
were not nearly so lovely and charming to us children, who 
were required to keep away from possible danger in the bigger 
stream. This was, in a sense, another world for us, with many 
less inviting sides than the old home. 

The main reason for making the change, was that it needed 
far less capital to set up business — like most people of scanty 
means who begin new ventures on small capital, and many try 
a grocery store. It seemed to promise larger cash returns than 
almost any other business needing ready money. It was not 
at that time thought to be fraught with moral wrong, and 
many public houses were respectable and useful along the 
great highway of travel for the accommodation of those going 
east or west. But it was a questionable calling at best, with 
but little moral tone, and it brought no lasting good to a 
Christian family. At that place we first saw whiskey sold by 
the glass and drunk off-hand at the public bar. Lager beer 
was then unknown. Perhaps it was not then an evidence of 
such low down shame and sure evil habit to drink for the sake 
of drinking as in this age. It always must have had, however, 
the same general demoralizing tendency — though not to the 
same extent and degree as drinking the vile liquors of these 
later years. 

There also, the small boy had his first sight of a cock-pit, 
where the Southern sports of the neighborhood thought it 
good fun to form an inclosed ring and make the game cocks 
fight to the death, as now in Cuba. They were armed with 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



17 



sharp steel "gaffs," their own spurs having been cut off. The 
bird that "turned tail" to run away was sure to be instantly 
killed outright by its owner. The victor of one contest usually 
had to fight two, three or more successive battles — perhaps to 
die at last from sheer exhaustion, while, as true game contend- 
ing with a new antagonist, fresh in wind and strength. This 
was deemed fine sport, and money was staked on eaoh con- 
test waged, amid profanity and drinking — much in the fashion 
of the semii-barbarous Filipinos, who, it is said, delight in this 
game of cruelty. The dead cocks, as fast as they were van- 
quished and killed, were carried away and stacked on a heap 
in the manure yard. This heartless scene made a child's flesh 
creep. 

On a Christmas day there was a grand skating tournament 
on the frozen Antietam. Youngsters in large numbers came and 
participated with the men. One poor fellow broke through 
the ice and slid quite under till he was out of sight, which ter- 
rified us greatly. The accident occurred fortunately near the 
bank of the stream ; and by good engineering and favoring 
providence, a hole was made in the ice a little farther down the 
current, and when the submerged man came floating by, they 
grappled him and he was drawn out before he was quite 
drowned. Soon his clothes were frozen stiff upon him while 
they scraped off the dripping wet ; and then they carried him 
to the house, where with due attention and persistent efforts 
he revived, so escaping the consequences of his chilling ac- 
cident. 

The great "National Turnpike," as it was called, relatively 
more important then than the P. R. R. now, passed in front of 
the house. This was the first improved thoroughfare between 
the east and the west. It was once the bone of contention, that 
for a time caused the bitter division between the main political 
parties of that day as to the expenditures of public moneys for 
"internal improvements." The millions since voted for river 
and harbor benefits and other political jobs, throw the costs of 
that highway far in the rear in these later years, just as that 



1 8 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

means of 'travel then has in proportion fallen behind modern 
systems. But before the day of railroads and fast transporta- 
tion trains, the lines of stage coaches ran day and night each 
way on this national road and were crowded with travelers. 
The stages made what was thought high rates of speed, some 
of them regularly eight to ten miles an hour. Some had four 
horses each, and some had six. The teams were frequently 
changed by relays of horses kept along the road at proper 
intervals of distances, so as to relieve the tired animals. Henry 
Clay, Thomas H. Benton, and other such prominent Western 
men passed to and fro, time and again, on that main line from 
their homes to Washington and Baltimore or return. They 
stopped here and there to "refresh." There was also, of 
course, much other travel. Numerous conveyances of private 
traveling parties, as well as riders on horse back, or in gig, or 
carry-all, or coach, along with many cumbersome freight 
wagons, made the road a busy highway. Droves of horses, 
cattle, sheep and hogs, going eastward, were often seen in 
those days, lining and covering the road at short inter- 
vals between. And yet the half of what is now taken by a 
single freight train on the multiplied through railroad lines 
between the east and west could not possibly have been crowd- 
ed upon the national pike. 

A special "pony post" in that year was put upon the road. 
Its object doubtless was to carry as speedily as could be done 
before the days of steam or the magnetic telegraph, a message 
from Washington to some point in the "far west," perhaps to 
Wheeling, or to Cincinnati, and also possibly to see what could 
be done for fast post routes. Relays of trained saddle horses 
were provided at so many miles apart along the way. The 
saddles were light and easy for horse and rider. At each re- 
lay station, about such an hour as was expected, all was to be 
in perfect readiness for the coming messenger. The horse at 
our place was put in the best possible condition for the service, 
and was to be brought fittingly to the stand and ready at the 
door. At the appointed time, up came the racing rider, or 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



19 



courier, waving his little flag and winding his horn, as he 
rounded the turn in the road. His horse was swathed in 
foamy sweat and the red nostrils distended seemed ready to 
shoot forth flame. Reining in his still willing, faithful steed, 
the uniformed postboy, like a fresh jaunty jockey, dismounted 
from the panting horse, and with the exchange of but a few 
words he was right on his new mount and away with a dash, 
soon rising up over the further hill — he was out of sight like a 
flash. It was a sight to stir the blood of small boys, who had 
early learned in some such fashion to split the wind on a fleet 
horseback ride. Beyond this, he was not concerned to learn of 
the success or results of the pony post to the sundown country. 

Sick, weak and weary, a poor, disheartened, footsore way- 
farer came to the door one day towards evening and craved 
shelter. He was taken in, possibly without much thought of 
rendering such service spoken of in Scripture. He lingered 
for weeks and then died. He was buried in a neighboring 
private graveyard. No name on the headstone tells any story 
to such as may have gone into that quiet resting place of 
mortals. Every unknown grave is well known by our Lord 
as are the more pretentious tombs of friends. Some take it 
as a pious act, when on occasion they go to visit the resting 
places of flheir own remembered dead. The stranger did not 
reveal his name or country or friends ; and all the fortune 
found in his possession when the breath had left his body, was 
a worn leathern purse containing a quarter of a Spanish dol- 
lar. His funeral as well as the weeks of care and keeping, 
was at the expense of "mine host," who kept the country hos- 
telry — for which things sake no doubt he or his family have 
in unknown ways received the reward of the Friend of the 
Stranger, who being sick was taken in. That burial, almost 
four score years ago, made a lasting impression on a shrinking 
young heart, and opened a place for sympathy towards the 
friendless sufferer. 

Quite a different thing was also witnessed one summer 
morning on that same national turnpike. Perhaps twenty-five 



20 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



or thirty, or more negroes, men, women and children, two by 
two coupled together were driven down along the highway, 
"hand-cuffed," and their manacles fastened to a long cable ; on 
either side of which they shambled along like oxen -in yokes. 
It was a weary gang in charge of a "soul-driver" on horse- 
back, who was taking these slaves from the upper counties of 
the State, to some place farther south. Georgia was then the 
traditional destination of such slaves sold for any cause, to be 
used in the cane or cotton fields ; and this fate was the com- 
mon terror of such as were thus liable to be sold and bought 
for <the far South. Slaves, as a rule, love their old homes. 
Among these so driven was a mother with a stout babe in her 
arms. She seemed the most worthy of pity of all the motly 
muster. Years afterwards, but before the Civil War, we 
learned that (there were heartless men along the margin of the 
Mason and Dixon line, especially on the northern side, who 
kidnapped free negroes in those borders and ran them across 
the State line and sold them to other wicked men — dealers who 
doubtless knew them to have been stolen from freedom ; and 
then, for a money profit resold them into hopeless slavery in 
the cotton States. At a later day I saw in a Virginia town 
one young "man well formed with good teeth, firm muscles, 
sound limbs, twenty-four years old," as the bills described him, 
on an auction block and sold to settle an estate. The last bid 
for him was fourteen hundred and twenty-five dollars. This 
brought out a remark from an old colored man standing near : 
"Golly! but niggah meat is high this mohnin'." When we 
were quite small children our family had held a few slaves. 
Basil and Ben, old "Suckey's" two boys, were our early play- 
mates in the yard. They somehow got to the land of the free, 
and we heard of them as free men years afterwards, still be- 
fore the war, living in the North Mountain, west of Mercers- 
burg ; but they never came on my kindly meant invitation sent 
them, to see me while a student at college. Their knowledge 
of other white folks, who are "mighty unsartin," made them 
cautious even as to trusting any one. They did not know 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



21 



whether sympathy was more likely to help than to hinder their 
freedom. As a matter of fact, I was once a sort of conductor 
myself on the underground railroad, to help to safety and free- 
dom a Maryland fugitive (who appealed to me in Pittsburg, 
because he heard I was a democrat who had been born in 
the South). 

Brutal fights were not uncommon occurrences in those early 
years of the late century. At public houses or in harvest fields, 
or at militia trainings, or at elections and at other such times 
and places personal fisticuffs and riotous violence by whole 
sets of men came to the sight of young and old. About the 
end of my fifth year came the first sad sight of such a revolt- 
ing, bloody affray. On a beautiful Sunday morning, in a rip- 
ening wheat field, under a large mulberry tree, rich with lus- 
cious fruit, not far from our house, two sets or gangs of white 
neighbor boys and youth met, and a quarrel soon followed. 
The leader of either side then, as was the custom, selected the 
champion to "fight it out" with the other. One was a hand- 
some youth, well grown, ruddy, muscular, and with a rather 
kindly, innocent face, expressing anything but cruelty. The 
other was more angular, loose- jointed, nervous, stern and 
meat-ax looking. Without either one having wronged the 
other personally, they two were "hisst on" by their respective 
partisans and nagged by the opposite set, till like ferocious 
wild beasts they glared and rushed at each other. Soon bloody 
noses, bruised faces, damaged eyes, and hair torn out by the 
handful, filled up the horrible picture. The bad work had to be 
done to a finish, amid cheers, yells, and applause of the young 
roughs and the cries and lamentations of us little fellows help- 
lessly looking on. Torn clothes, trampled wheat, and ghastly 
looks made a sad and debasing picture for a Sunday morning, 
never to be effaced from memory. There was no Sunday- 
school within reach then for our attendance. 

About this time too, the little chap felt the first cruel wrong 
of a false charge against his honesty, while doing a well meant 
kindness. A silver thimble belonging to a sponging visitor 



22 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



in the family, who had overstayed her welcome was lost. For 
some days fruitless search for it about the house had been 
made. One day while playing under an inaccessible part of the 
porch, the lost silver trinket suddenly shone before a boy's 
startled eyes. It had doubtless fallen through a crack or 
crevice from above. Snatching it up eagerly and greatly 
elated, the lucky finder, without telling any one of the family, 
ran hastily, intending gladly to surprise the woman who had 
met with the loss, and cheerfully placed the found thimble in 
her own hand. But instead of receiving it from him in any 
proper grateful spirit, as was reasonably to have been expect- 
ed, she began savagely to upbraid him as a "young thief, who 
had stolen and secreted all these days her silver treasure." The 
injured feelings of a five-year-old child may not be just equal 
to those of grown up people ; but his sufferings at the false 
charge and its disgrace were most intense. It has made him 
careful not to similarly "offend one of these little ones." Such 
treatment were well nigh enough to make some children dis- 
honest, because of wrong charges. 

Next year after this came our family's removal from the 
Antietam to Frederick City. There was at that time a public 
house at the head of Market street, and this became our new 
abode. But neither was this a good place to raise baptized 
children. Many rough and sinful things came before the 
young eyes to mar the forming moral life. If only following 
everyday example set before the young by the coarse life of 
men be bad for children, it goes very far toward familiarizing 
one with evil habits damaging to character. Better never, 
were it for man or child, to see and learn to do a bad thing 
even once. And to be safer, it is always best to keep children 
from seeing and hearing and experimentally learning to do a 
wicked thing "but once"; rather than to have to flog them 
afterwards ever so hard for the practice of what has been set 
before them by evil and vicious example in word or act. Happy 
the child who is saved from sinful beginnings. 

During our first year in Frederick, I saw repeatedly the 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



23 



prisoners in the county jail. Among them was one Markley, 
a condemned murderer. To me he was a kindly man, always 
speaking with pleasant voice, and having fondling ways. He 
was publicly hanged for the murder of the Hughey family. 
The town was full of people from all the country around far 
and near on the day of his execution. It was a gross and de- 
grading public exhibition witnessed from the top of a hill, 
which at the distance from our house could be but indistinctly 
seen. The occasion was altogether coarse, and many drowned 
the feeling it awakened by intoxicating drinks. In those days 
a hanging, or putting a man to death by the forms of law for 
his crimes, stirred the public sentiment to its profoundest 
depths. Life seems, however since the war, much cheaper 
now, and private executions even in jail yards are not as many 
in our land as perhaps they should be, for the numerous mur- 
ders (10,000 a year) now committed. The life of man was 
then held dear and even the suicide mania was also compara- 
tively unknown. I felt a profound childish pity for the doomed 
Markley, the gallows victim, before he was hung. One day 
in the jail, he had held my hands kindly till his mild blue eyes 
filled with tears, and then he tenderly patted my head. Perhaps 
he was thinking of some time past when he was a free little 
boy not clogged with heavy clanking chains on his fettered 
limbs. Or, possibly he had a son somewhere, to whose name 
the father's sin and disgrace would attach. Indeed, the way of 
the transgressor is hard, for 'himself and others. 

An insolvent debtor, another prisoner there, without chains, 
one Moreland, engaged my older brother to carry a bundle 
from the jail to another part of the city. On the street we fell 
in with some rough, idle children playing. They engaged us 
also, and while our attention was thereby taken up, they stole 
the entrusted package which we had thoughtlessly left lying 
unguarded ; and when we came back after the loss was discov- 
ered to look for it, both that and the children were gone. This 
to our mind was about as bad as that for which the other man 
was executed. It was the breaking of another commandment. 



24 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



I have since then attended as spiritual adviser two condemned 
murderers, one of whom I think was sincerely penitent; but 
the other, who seemed for a while in earnest, was reprieved 
only a few days before the time set for his execution, and in 
a very short interval he lost all interest in religious instruction, 
the creed and commandments as well as penitent prayers. 
Had he been hung on the day appointed for him to have died, 
I probably to this hour might have thought his repentance 
was genuine. After his release from prison, he never came 
to church, and I never saw him but once. He was careless 
and indifferent then. 

Times grew hard again for the family in Frederick. The 
business ran down finally and utterly failed. The place was 
closed, and the head of the family went to the West in quest of 
better fortune. Sore want followed for the common neces- 
saries of life. The mother alone with no income for the time, 
had hard work to provide food for the children. Some of 
them went to live with friends in Pennsylvania. Myself, as 
the largest one left, was sent out with a small basket of early 
apples grown on our lot, to sell or peddle them at retail on the 
street. This was an unusual thing to be seen in Frederick at 
that early day. The venture of so young a merchant was 
however a moderate success. Many and oft repeated trips of 
the "apple boy" brought some money for the tin box used for 
a bank and the mayor bought "schmere kase," cottage cheese, 
at our house, so there was something for our need. These 
were "the days of unleavened bread," flap-jacks made of 
"middlings," not of finest white flour. A keen appetite thank- 
fully accepted that fare. 

Meanwhile the family attended the "Evangelical Reformed" 
Church and Sunday-school, where the teacher told us about 
hell ; whether of heaven is not remembered. Rev. John H. 
Schmaltz was pastor there then, immediately preceding the 
pastorate of Rev. Dr. D. Zacharias. On a Sunday morning, 
my parents on the way to divine service mutually resolved, 
whatever else came, they would lead a Christian life. What 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



25 



that was, as overheard by me at their side, seemed a deep 
mystery unexplained. Through a long life of toils and trials, 
my mother's walk and conversation were in the faith ; and only 
terminated within sight of her ninety-second birthday, when 
she was called to rest — many years after her husband had 
been taken from his family. His time and place and manner 
of death is to us unknown. The pastor's blessing, with his 
hands on our heads, in a pastoral call, went with the little 
ones in the years following. 

My first regular day at school for five weeks was at Mrs. 
Elder's, a private house in Frederick. She had a sort of Kin- 
dergarten, before the days of that sort of school for small 
children. Dr. Lewis H. Steiner once exulted in having first 
learned good English there. She was a Roman Catholic, and 
would never chide us for listening to the sweet harmonies of 
the bells daily on the near by sisterhood's place of worship 
and confinement. The tones of those bells were more sweet to 
our ears than the ironish clanging sounds that are so often 
heard from the more modernly mixed patent cheap bell metal. 
The church bell ought to make an impression of its own pe- 
culiar sacred call to come and worship. It should be intrin- 
sically different from and better than that of the shop, locomo- 
tive or steam boat. Let the church bells charm. I have heard 
those same Frederick bells in later years and they are still 
the same. 

One of our uncles from Pennsylvania came on horseback 
to visit the family at Frederick. His horse was a young Se- 
lim. The Irish boy thought a ride down to the Monocacy 
would be fine exercise. Neglecting the use of a saddle and 
bridle, he only rode with the halter. Mounted "bareback" 
without guiding rein, away like an arrow shot the young racen 
down the main city streets at will. Then back and around 
again, repeating the dashing run three times. John was ar- 
rested for fast riding in the streets and his plea before the 
mayor was, that "the fool of a horse the first round ran like a 
wild baste to his own plasemint ; and the second toime it was 



26 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



rather an undecided run; for it was partly the horse's own 
notion and only part that of the rider's ; but in the third round 
the rider had it his own way entirely." It was perhaps better 
than John Gilpin's experience, for this son of Erin rode bare- 
back, clinging to the mane and digging in his knees while with 
stroke of fist, first right, then left, he turned the course which- 
ever way the rider wished. 

Late in the summer of 1831 we left Frederick, and did not 
return for twenty years, which was at the dedication of the 
new church. Dr. Alfred Nevin, of Chambersburg, and Dr. 
C. F. McCauley, of Middletown, assisted the pastor on that 
occasion, 1850. Some time also in the fall of 1864, on invita- 
tion of Dr. Zacharias, I preached there a special sermon in the 
interest of the Orphan Home which he expected soon to found 
at Frederick. This visit was during the Civil War, and the 
Confederate cavalry gave me a hard chase before we got 
through Hagerstown on the return to Waynesboro. 

What became of the Orphan Home is not clear to me. In 
1870, December 28, one of my editorials in the Messenger 
makes the following reference in part to the effort, as though 
it were a settled work : 

The Frederick Orphan Home has come into actual existence. We 
heartily thank God, that another such real practical Christian work has 
been thus begun. And not the least remarkable feature in the enter- 
prise is the mode and manner of its being. Pious thought and purpose 
projected it, and the children of the Church at Frederick have labored, 
with the pastor and friends these for years, until their annual offerings 
have come to be counted by thousands, with which they have the means 
to buy the property now needed for the Home. 

It is started on the broadest ground of simple Christian faith. No 
Synod, or State, or county, is especially to patronize and support it. 
A single pastor, whose devout heart is in this work, is supported by his 
consistory and individual Christians, desiring to honor our Lord in 
taking charge of the poor orphan, left as a legacy to the Church. The 
Sunday-school, the congregation, and many friends in the community 
generally, are fully enlisted as to their Christian sympathies and ma- 
terial aid in behalf of this noble enterprise. This we know to be no 
sudden and unsettled whim. Years ago already they had resolved on 



NEW SURROUNDINGS. 



27 



this good plan; and they have been therefore all along untiringly and 
steadily working towards this end. Now that it is so happily reached, 
we offer sincerely to rejoice with them — along with the whole Church. 

The property purchased for the use of the Home is adjoining that 
of the new church. It is 62 ft. by 200 ft., abundantly large for the 
purpose intended. But if there should be need for more, the lot in the 
rear of the Church, 50 ft. by 90 ft., fortunately adjoining, could also 
be devoted to the same purpose. The large buildings on the property 
can be arranged to meet the present wants of the Home. The Trus- 
tees may well feel satisfied with their purchase. 

There is no Christian effort more practical than that which takes the 
orphans into the warm bosom of the Church, and nurtures them for 
Christ. 

The charity of the Church has no more ready flow than when it 
pours its offerings into these treasuries of the Lord. Alms offered to 
the orphan cause seem to go right to the relief of the Lord's own. And 
Christian charity in this form shall in no wise lose its reward* 



n-i 



III. 

* 

At the Cove Gap 

UR removal from Frederick took us to a new home at 
the Cove Gap, three miles west of Mercersburg, at the 
foot of the North Mountain, quite near to President Buchan- 
an's (birthplace in "Stony Batter." Brother Hannabery once 
said in a society debate : "No wonder this mountain 'gapped' 
when such a man as Mr. Buchanan was born there." Here, 
for us, there seemed for a time good promise for a return of 
family prosperity. All the stages from east and west stopped 
to "water and refresh." Freight wagons covered the yard at 
night. Droves of all sorts passed and some tarried for the 
night — need was for hay, oats, corn — and meals for the men. 
Prices were low, but rent, produce and labor were cheap. 

With anything like good management and divine favor there 
were profits in store. But in the main, something went wrong 
again with this business ; and no blessing seemed to follow 
from the Lord, as far as then visible. Prosperity in material 
things might have led to the ruination in the habits of some 
of the children. At the end of one year's trial, another blessed 
failure followed. 

This place too has for us its varied remembrances, at least 
of personal interest. There was a small paper mill directly op- 
posite our house. It had its wonders for us children. There 
were in it a number of boys and girls assorting, cutting and 
bleaching rags. Then came the grinding, pulping and final 
sifting of this ground mass, caught from the tanks of watered 
mixture on the sieve frames to make the sheets, and then 
turned down on blankets. Then the new crude pieces were 
piled up between the layers of woolen cloths ; afterwards came 
pressing, sizing, drying, trimming, folding, ruling and ream- 
ing the finished fabric. This was a world of interest to see. 
Writing paper, coarse, common, uncallandered, wrapping pa- 




THE BOY EIGHTY YEARS AGO. 
Painting the Red Hair and Freckles. 
The Artist said: Sit up erect, you little rascal! 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



29 



per, bonnet board paper — blue on one side, gray on the other — 
made what was called paste-board, for colors of two kinds 
were matted or put together. These were the several varieties 
of the rather primitive manufacture. 

Then, in the pure stream flowing from the nearby mountain 
springs were speckled trout and other fish. One day twenty 
years later, a fellow student at college, John S. Boyle, and I 
caught one hundred and three of the bright beauties with hook 
and line. At evening the "whip-poor-wills" called to each 
other plaintively from dooryard to dell. Rattlesnakes were 
killed within a few hundred yards of the front door. Deer 
were run down and taken not far from the house. Bears 
were seen in daytime prowling in the neighborhood. Wolves 
howled at winter nights from either knob of the mountain. 
Foxes, coons, opossums, squirrels, rabbits and minks were 
lively. Wild turkeys, pheasants, and partridges were among 
the game of the woods. Of all these and others, birds, beasts, 
reptiles and fishes, I have seen free and wild in the mountain 
or roaming at will ; and some I helped to kill or capture be- 
fore I was much above eight years old. 

We children, together or alone, were free to range at will 
in the nearby mountain, and make such discoveries and cap- 
tures as fell in our path. It was not thought a great thing 
for us boys to kill a rattler, a copperhead, or black-racer; or 
to find curious things happening or to be met with in our way. 
Once a large snake, actually seemed to have charmed our 
younger brother, while he was playing alone at some little 
distance from the rest of us ; so that he seemed unable to move 
away from the place. Noticing something queer in his man- 
ner, he was called to come over to us, or go to the house. His 
indistinct reply induced me to go nearer to see what was 
wrong. The large spotted reptile with alluring eyes intently 
set on him did not seem to notice my approach till it was - 
struck with a stone and killed, not more than a few yards away 
from his little bare feet. The seeming spell was broken and 
he was relieved and free. Some people doubt the power of 



3o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



snakes to charm. I have noticed birds in the wild woods in 
great alarm evidently under some binding spell, till the charm 
was lifted and then they flew away in rapturous joy. 

There is something peculiar in the eye of a rattler. In a 
contest with a rattle snake at close range even a long-barreled 
muzzle loading flint lock shot gun is a rather vain weapon for 
defence, and not much to count on for close attack. One, how- 
ever, in our youth, once served me right well. A lot of us boys 
were out with such an old style armory, shared by all of us, 
which was not always sure to be primed in the pan when wanted 
for firing ; but this time was the favorable exception. The only 
gun of the party just then was in my hands, and we were 
climbing an old stake and rider fence partly down, to reach 
an open field from the woods. With one foot on an inclined 
rail and the other in the act of swinging over the low top, at- 
tention fell on the other side where was a grand coil of glit- 
tering brown, black and yellow, about the size of the old style 
bread basket. It had two active ends. One was raised from 
near the center of the coil with two blazing eyes and a darting 
tongue ; the other end turned up about two finger lengths was 
vibrating industriously and emitting furiously a monotoned 
sound of warning and threatening. It was a rattler for sure, 
and he meant aggressive business. 

Too late to retreat, and unstable on my base of rickety fence 
— too risky to get down on the further side, the next best thing 
was to bring the gun into use. Swinging it quickly forward 
in general direction of the double ended round heap of spotted 
enmity to man, the trigger was sprung, the pan flashed for- 
tunately this time, and "bang" went the blunderbuss. With 
what result ? If it were a miss, the very next moment through 
the smoke would be a stinging strike of the mad reptile. 
Breath came quick, but no pain was felt. The recoil of the 
gun was awful ; with its forward end so near the ground the 
discharge was terrific. 

When the smoke cleared away, there was a bare place in the 
grass and leaves where the snake had been making ready for 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



31 



active hostile operations. All was clean blown away, while 
ornamental fragments of the scattered enemy were dangling 
in artistic pendants from the adjoining shrubbery. Though 
relieved from the undesirable situation, it seemed to me never- 
theless on reflection that a couple of handy stones, or a stout 
club would suit me much better for the next close encounter 
with a fighting mad rattler. A long gun at short range in 
such a close business matter is rather a vain thing for war or 
battle, when the enemy in readiness is a wrathful rattlesnake 
and has all the advantage for work at close quarters in the 
death dealing engagement. Of all the rattlers and copperheads 
we ever fought to the death, this one scared us the worst. 

Runaway negro slaves congregated near the Gap in a little 
hamlet known as New Africa at the base of North Mountain. 
An old mulatto in the pay of the slave catchers from Hagers- 
town and Mercersburg, gave notice to the "soul-drivers" of 
any new-comers ; and then soon the poor refugees were cap- 
tured and remanded across the Mason and Dixon line. On a 
warm Sunday morning, a number of negroes were gathered 
on the long porch at the front of the house. The old pimp, 
Andy Vaney, was among them whetting a razor and noisily 
pretending to try it on the cheeks of those about him. Finally 
he turned to one young fellow, a stranger, and said : "Joe, le' 
me staht a bea'd on your han' " — at which they all joined in a 
hearty laugh. Just then two strange men inside the window 
looking out at the affair of seeming fun, quickly rushed out 
the front door. The betrayer had taken spittle on his finger 
and rubbed it on the back of Joe's hand and next pretended to 
shave it off. While this arrested the crowd's attention, sud- 
denly as a flash the two strange men grappled Joe, sprung the 
handcuffs on him and were openly showing dirks and pistols 
to prevent any attempt at rescue. Quickly placing him behind 
one of these men, hastily mounted on horseback, the poor fel- 
low was bound to the saddle girth ; thus fettered and manacled, 
he made an effort to steady himself in his seat on the horse's 
bare back. This was taken as an attempt to escape from the 



32 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



captors. Suddenly the slave catcher struck and plunged his 
dirk knife into the back of the captive's hand. Then, without 
any care of the bleeding wound, they rode off with the man 
they now called "Bill," the unsuspecting young fellow who had 
sought freedom among his colored friends ; but who had been 
so cruelly betrayed by one of his own race while pre- 
tending to be a friend. That horrifying incident, witnessed in 
my early boyhood remains in memory as a dark deed of cru- 
elty, done for a paltry money reward. Such heartless acts 
leave deep marks scarred on the soul's first tenderness, and 
show man's inhumanity to man. 

DOGS. 

One evening a man having over the cantle of his saddle a 
sack or saddle bags containing two hound pups, with a head 
protruding on either side from a slit ripped in the seam, made 
two of us boys happy in the ownership of the young dogs. One 
was for my older brother, and he named him Rattler ; the other 
was for me, and to be called Belman. Mine became the more 
active, and quickly learned by scent to pick up a trail and fol- 
low it faithfully, on which he "gave tongue," and made fine 
dog music. But the game once started, or brought from 
cover, Rattler was the swifter dog. When the town huntsmen 
therefore brought their trained pack at long tongue down the 
ravine of the Gap at Buchanan's birthplace, between the 
mountains, after a startled deer, our dogs generally were un- 
leashed, and in short chase along the stream the deer would 
likely be taken. For this sometimes as reward came a fine 
piece of venison. No wonder Isaac wished to bless Esau for 
the goodly mess brought in from the hunt for his father's 
savory meal. On one occasion an elderly neighbor seeing the 
deer coming, set on his farm dog to overtake the well run 
down deer. But in a short chase the common dog was winded 
so that, though running awhile side by side with the stag, he 
had not the extra power to seize and hold him. In passing 
near the old farmer himself at a turn in the chase tried to lay 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



33 



hold, but he too failing in this could only beat the exhausted 
animal's side with his hat as he passed. Before they turned 
the bend of the stream, up came Rattler and Belman in hot 
foot on the trail and at the first hillside the game was taken. 
It was a beautiful sight and withal exciting, though pitiful 
enough too, to witness such a wild bounding chase. The hunt- 
ers glad for the easy capture, sent home with us as usual a 
share of the slaughtered venison. 

Another dog that made a part of some incidents in our 
home life calls for special honorable mention. For very many 
real services he deserves thankful record. A gaunt wild 
puppy somewhat like a half-grown wolf, was noticed at times 
around the yards, where he occasionally found scraps to eat 
or a bone. By kindly throwing him repeatedly a piece, he first 
would watch at long distance, and then if left alone, would 
come furtively and claim the morsel. Thus in course of time 
he became more and more trusting, and finally would take at 
once what was thrown towards him. In course of time he was 
domesticated; but he would not allow any hand to caress him 
further back than his head or perhaps part way on the neck 
towards the point of his shoulders. He was of a darkish col- 
or, but not black. Pointed ears, erect, always set forward on 
the alert, broad at the jowel, vivid piercing eyes above a 
rather small nose, heavy shoulders and thin flanks ; this alto- 
gether gave him a peculiar appearance, which called for re- 
mark from many strangers. While not willing to be fondled, 
he became strongly attached to the smaller children, over 
whom he was proud to keep guard. His name was therefore 
"Watch," and he became a family pet. We always felt safe 
in the woods when this dog was along. If a coat, or any piece 
of clothing were left off or forgotten, he would stay by it in 
watchfulness till it was called for, even if he had to wait hours, 
a day or night. If a snake came in our way, he would quickly 
attack and kill it by sudden shakes and lancing snaps of his 
sharp teeth, thus saving himself from its poisonous strike. 
This we repeatedly witnessed. Though only of medium size, 



34 



FOtJR SCORE AND &0RE 



he was master of about every dog that he ever tackled ; which 
was uniformly every strange one that he met, no matter of 
what breed, size or weight. Even two ordinary antagonists, 
to this one did not make much difference to him ; as his steel- 
spring 4ike jaws worked fully equal to any two pairs of 
others. His method was not to bite and hold, but to snap 
^quick, sharp and often, with clean cut. 

He could never be enticed to stay away from home or fol- 
low any other master. Once he was tied with rope, and taken 
away on a wager, and confined in the town, in a light board 
covered building. After some days he gnawed a hole through 
solid inch boards and crept out and soon reported himself at 
home, where his joyful capers and low yelps showed his great 
delight and intelligent expressions of dog pleasure. He de- 
fended our father once in a night attack of a panther on the 
mountain road and vanquished the beast. In a bear hunt 
when bruin would sit on his haunches and defend himself 
right and left from all the other dogs in front by crushing 
their skulls or breaking their ribs with single stroke of his 
awful paw, Watch would make electric assaults on the bear's 
rear, nipping him in his hams, and then as suddenly retreating' 
before the great, heavy beast could turn on him ; till the 
hunters came up to end the contest with the deadly rifles. He 
could keep the cattle pens safe from wolves often heard howl- 
ing at night near by in the mountain. When he got older he 
became as gray as a wolf. He was probably a halfbreed and 
so had a side that could be domesticated, though always half 
savage. 

Irish immigrants in great numbers traveled on this road in 
the direction of Johnstown as their destination, where they 
then all expected to work on the "canal." Some had large 
families, to whom whiskey and raw eggs seemed their chief 
solace. When the cholera scare of that year, 1832, was upon 
them, they were in great terror of the possible danger. Their 
general manner and /habits did not win much of our sympathy, 
except for their often ailing and crying children. Numerous 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



35 



Irish fights ana shindies we had to see. If two or three of 
them happened to turn 'upon the landlord, it was "Watch" 
who quickly interfered to balance the inequality. German im- 
migrants too, in large numbers traveled in wagon loads over 
the mountain from Baltimore westward. These were in the 
main of a very different sort from the irritable Patlanders. 
Sturdy men and solid boys, with healthy women and stout 
girls in short skirts, made up the general company. They 
would camp near their wagons, buy a few necessary supplies, 
cook their frugal meals ; and the next morning refreshed, 
start to climb the Cove Mountain in cheerful mood towards 
their unknown future homes in the West. We often pitied 
them and their little ones, because they were going further 
than our home. 

A great desire for the farther west seemed inwardly urging 
the father towards the setting sun. But mother had too much 
already of these trials. She wished especially to save her 
growing family from what must inevitably be a still greater 
danger morally. She had thus far received but little encour- 
agement, however, from her family friends who were still at 
grandfather's home. Most of her people were in condition to 
have afforded sympathetic aid and material relief, in so far 
as called for in behalf of herself and covenant offspring. All 
she could herself do, therefore, was to refuse stoutly to be 
made partaker in any more ventures or westward removes. 
This much was certain: the unwelcome traffic must end here. 
It was for her a hard, but a safe course to take. 

IN THE COVE. 

What followed then, the next year, was a removal to a re- 
tired and much secluded place in the "Little Cove," on a worn 
out, abandoned and neglected farm wedged in between the 
two mountains, with dilapidated buildings, straggling fences, 
and fields overrun with weeds, and briars. We had not the 
means, the tools, the stock nor the labor strength to improve 
the place, subdue the wild grounds and compel them to re- 



36 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



turn a fair living. It seemed like another move of the frog 
in the well, jumping from bad down to worse, materially; 
and the hopeless outlook depressed all the family. Two of the 
larger children again went to live with relatives and the head 
of the house went West to look for something that never 
came. His hard fortune financially here, he said, had broken 
his spirit. That year for us also witnessed a still further de- 
pression and stringency at home. It was the autumn of the 
year that the stars fell from the heavens, and ours fell from 
their hopeful sky too. People in the Cove thought the end 
of the world was come, and while they prayed or read the 
Bible, some wished such portent were true. 

That part of Franklin county, Pa., was then to us what 
seemed the most sequestered portion of the land. Lying in 
between two ranges of the North Mountain, with its upper 
entrance by a rough roadway from the Gap, coming in near 
the uncleared top of the South Knob, it is at first only a high 
stretch leading to a sort of broken, narrow gulch ; with short 
days between the mountain tops, of late sunrises and early 
sunsets, until towards the south it widens further down. Ag- 
riculture, except buckwheat and rye, was not its fort then. 
At that time only three habitable places were within perhaps 
three or four miles of us. If any articles for family use were 
needed, a long rough way up by the Gap road had to be taken 
on foot by us to Mercersburg. An indistinct foot trail east- 
ward directly across the mountain towards the sunrising 
would however shorten the long miles distance. This path, 
more than half a dozen times, I trod alone when eight years 
old, going occasionally for a few necessities. Panthers 
screamed, wolves howled and bears roamed and by daylight 
even were known to be in that mountain. But with "Watch" 
along, there was felt some sense of protection and security. 
Once with mother and my smaller brother, they on horseback 
and I on foot, along the Cove road leading to the Gap, in 
broad daylight a bear's cub half the size of a common dog 
shambled across the roadway just in front of us. The old 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



37 



bear did not put in an appearance, but we feared to pursue 
the awkward youngster, lest the old one might reveal herself 
and interview us, if the little one would set up a cry. Usually 
for our long walk to town, we got a few groceries in trade for 
berries or fox-grapes, or perhaps some eggs, or a small roll 
of butter. Once the wild grapes found no sale at all, and 
after lugging them about the streets to find a purchaser, we 
were at last compelled to dump them into a fence corner, and 
go home empty-handed. 

FISHING. 

Foxes stole the young chickens, bears sometimes spoiled 
the corn patch, the nightly howling wolves came down in 
winter to terrify or tear the nearby sheep or cattle, if not 
protected; wild mountain hogs also damaged the vegetable 
plot; a rattlesnake bit the children's little pet Italian grey- 
hound, and the potatoes and cabbages in the poor soil did not 
grow big nor plentiful. The next thing of help was fishing 
in the small stream, at which I became a sort of expert, and a 
panful of the finny tribe often refreshed and gratified our 
hungry mouths. When the water was too clear, there were 
but few bites even in the deeper eddies or "holes." But ne- 
cessity sharpens invention for an eight year old boy. So 
recourse was had to strategem in the fishing. The waters 
must be "muddied" by stirring up the soft ooze above the 
fishing places. There was near our house by the stream, the 
remains of an old abandoned "forge and boring mill" where 
years before gun barrels had 'been made by crude machinery 
run with water power. The old ruins were not far from the 
garden fence, where the current just below was deflected by 
a hillside, and a dam for husbanding the water power had 
been built against its side. The structure was nearly all torn 
away by age and freshets, but drift had lodged in the head, 
and in the tail race, where were good places to make with 
little efforts muddy water any day in the week, except Sunday. 
Just a few hundred feet below was a ledge of rocks at the hill- 



3§ 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



side on the opposite bank of the quiet stream near to the bend, 
under the shadow of which the fish were in hiding in the days 
when the water was clear. The riled water however quickly 
brought them out, and the baited hook then generally landed 
some of them. It was nearly as good a success as "bobbing 
or gigging.'' 

Once I was permitted to go along in the night with a "gig- 
ging" party of men. The way they do it is to make torches 
of rich or fat resinous pine knots, split and tied in long spliced 
faggots. Held by one or more of the party, these lighted 
torches throw the glare into the stream. The torch bearers 
may be either in the water, or on the bank if not too much ob- 
structed by undergrowth. Quietly the spearmen, with their 
gigs or sort of harpoons, move cautiously up stream in the 
water keeping a sharp outlook to note the places of resting 
for the finny tribe. Beside a stone, or shelving rock, or pro- 
tecting over-hung bank, they find and spear the fish or eels. 
A skillful thrust of the three or four tined gig strikes the 
victim, and the reverse teeth along the prongs or tines haul 
home the catch to the basket or bag. The main danger of 
failure is that the refracting power of the water at greater or 
smaller depths, being so much greater than the air, the spear- 
man's aim in deeper or in more shallow water, is not always 
correctly calculated and sure. Only in perpendicular thrust, 
it makes no difference as to the moderate depth of the water. 
Another way of fishing is to "bob" from a boat on a mill dam. 
But that is not half as exciting; it is more like fishing with 
hook and line. Boys who have never gone a "gigging" have 
missed something hugely enjoyable. It is safer too than for 
a boy of eight to follow without dog or gun, in the mountain 
snow a fresh track of a shambling bear; or to make too close 
an investigation of the much trodden element where the night 
before a wolf-concert, or corroboree has gathered the howling 
pack. Our next neighbor saw only half a mile from our 
place a big shaggy mountain wolf sitting in broad daylight 
in a rocky recess near the ridge road; and while he passed 



AT THE COVE GAP. 



39 



close by, it did not move. He always was looked for in pass- 
ing that shelving rock. I have never lost interest in fishing — 
love it more than hunting. 

The glazed crust of the snow that winter was strong enough 
frozen to bear animals and men. In that day there had never 
been any coasting or tobogganning ; but on a piece of board 
at least one run was made down a steep hillside. Philosophy 
of descending force in falling bodies had not been well stud- 
ied. Very soon there was a limp boy doubled up among the 
trees at the foot of the icy slide. One trip was enough for 
that time ; the lesson in momentum practically had been thor- 
oughly learned. 

Necessity too, had trained the boy thus early to chop fire 
wood. The only stove, an old "ten-plate," must be supplied 
with fuel. The wood to be cut was plenty and not far away; 
but there was no horse to draw it home. Such long light dry 
pieces as could be dragged over the frozen snow, were gath- 
ered and used. Mother preferred hickory, but it was hard 
to cut. It was a hard job for a little fellow, stout enough for 
some things ; but it did not really hurt him then or since, to 
labor in keeping the house warm. Not much real work had as 
yet been learned or done by him for the family he loved, and 
it was one of the ways of learning to wear the yoke in his 
youth. The burden is always suited by the Lord to the back, 
and the back is generally made to fit its burden. With this 
turn, came the end of my first life period, in an eclipse of its 
home joys and freedom. Except the impress made upon the 
soul, it was to all else of early days, my childhood's last 
Good-bye ! 



IV. 



Enduring the Yoke. 

' I V HREE years next following the first leave of childhood's 
home, years of rigorous oppression, mental repression, 
physical suppression and general depression of body, mind, 
soul — the whole being — running from the ninth to the twelfth 
year in a poor boy's life — produced a marked effect in his con- 
dition. The physical, mental and moral endowments, tender 
and susceptible at that age, take on a type for future years. 
What otherwise "might have been" a life, free, cheerful, joy- 
ous, open and buoyant, the growth and development of natural 
powers under normal family sunshine, with favorable influ- 
ences and right training, is now only a matter of guess work, 
as compared with an entirely different actual course. 

Breaking in a colt is a high art in horse-trainers. So in men 
in charge is the training of a boy. There is a breaking that 
spoils. You can break a dish, and it is ruined "forever as an 
article of family use. A fine mirror if broken, no longer re- 
flects form and beauty with accuracy. Without breaking in, 
a spirited horse is well nigh useless and of not much value. 
But rightly subdued to the will of man and taught what is 
expected of the animal by wise, firm, gentle and thorough 
handling is what makes the well broken colt a grand posses- 
sion. A boy needs somewhat similar treatment. Sympa- 
thetic, kind, gentle, intelligent, and withal firm, absolute 
authoritive training; subjecting the will to free and ready 
obedience to duty in useful service, thrifty industry and 
cheerful activity, is good for a growing boy. But harsh and 
brutal treatment by ignorant and tyrannical trainers spoils a 
self-willed boy and harms the coming man. 

Misguided conscience, or lack of proper ability in the break- 
ing in of a boy makes a vast difference as to what is brought 
out of him. It requires something of the sort of wisdom that 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



41 



Solomon asked of the Lord to govern aright the great Jewish 
nation. Shortcoming here is inestimable loss and waste in the 
rising generation. Pity the boy who so much needs the right 
breaking in and yet gets so little of what would enrich his life. 

When, therefor, the boy came to the new place to live under 
adverse conditions, there were of course real sore experiences, 
which affected all his youthful activities and had much to do 
in molding the personality ever since. The influence of early 
training settles what conies after. 

"A pebble in the streamlet scant, 
Has turned in course the mighty river; 

The rain drop on the baby plant, 
May warp the giant oak for ever." 

Mother and the two younger children went back the next 
spring to take charge of grandfather's old home for her un- 
married brother, just then beginning to farm, with scanty 
means, and who was entirely destitute of housekeeping fix- 
tures. Along with mother's experience all her remaining 
earthly substance and personal labors were put to his use 
alone. Without estimated value for these, no pay for her 
services in carrying on his household operations for about 
ten years, she and two little children were fed — not even 
clothed. The rest of us were sent out to work for a living. 
Without much understanding or bargain either way, the sub- 
ject of this story was taken by an aged couple, claiming rela- 
tives' right to make him their boy of all work, in stable, field, 
garden, kitchen and elsewhere. It may have been intended for 
their advantage, profit and convenience ; but it was not for 
the boy's liking, comfort, improvement, nor in the main for 
his benefit. His scanty bundle of clothes tied up in a blue- 
barred cotton handkerchief was put into his hands, and tear- 
fully he started on the way down through the orchard towards 
the new place. The old people were soon found to be stern, 
unsympathetic, exacting and extremely narrow in notions. 
They were able to make but small allowance for a poor boy 



42 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



who had not been brought under anything like their severe 
and morose way of thinking and habit of living. In looking 
at the case at this distance, after all these )^ears, it does seem 
a pity, that his lot was not more free and congenial. The 
home link was broken : the boy was adrift in the world. 

Before long the early ideal of kindred and relationship be- 
came a terror of severity, and the once cherished image of 
hoped for good fell, and turned into what seemed very coarse 
clay. We had nothing in common, feeling, sympathy, or con- 
fidence. I could not then appreciate their stern treatment of 
what they called a "good for nothing, untrained boy." They 
did not seem to know how to make the most and best of a very 
forlorn, heart-sick and more than orphaned child. Affection 
and loving trust, very useful on both sides if properly exer- 
cised, were entirely lost. For three whole years, this place 
was to me a cheerless slavery and an unmitigated hard lot of 
unrewarded service. It cultivated a stoical endurance of con- 
tinual hardness, and at times it began to awaken willful stub- 
bornness — which the severest chastisements, at times almost 
brutal, never subdued. Without any companionship of other 
children whatever, or sympathy of any kind, the oppressed 
soul only shrank into a smaller and harder shell. There was 
nothing to draw out the finer and better feelings, or warm 
the heart, or thaw out the coldness of self. It begat merely a 
sort of ox endurance, ass stubbornness, bull-dog resistance, 
and bear combativeness. 

It is not the purpose to draw the lines by this reference in 
the darkest colors. This much of the truth may perhaps be 
given to throw light on what molded the boy. His sleeping 
place, for a long while, was on a poor bed in the unfinished 
garret of a large double brick house — in which there were 
then generally only two, or at times, three other occupants. 
Winter snows sifted through shingles and collected on the 
bed covers, or danced over the floor at getting up time. Sum- 
mer heat through thin wooden roof, scorched the tattered and 
neglected bed, alive with multiplied pestering vermin. Thun- 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



43 



der storms at night seemed to come very shockingly near to 
the bare roof covering, and their crashing sounds were fear- 
fully alarming to the lonely occupant of the solitary garret — 
where long restlessness wore out the strength of the attenu- 
ated body, so that if at last repose would come late to drawn 
nerves he was liable to oversleep himself the next morning; 
only to be suddenly waked up perhaps with the lashing of a 
horsewhip. Then with coarse table fare, none too plentiful 
in allowance, which he was often too stubborn to eat, it is not 
to be wondered at, that the once stout boy grew thin. For 
what seemed long stretched weeks of homesickness, he was 
not permitted to see any of his family; and when once an 
older sister felt the bones of his shrunken arms, she wept. 
Clothing was of the commonest kind and scant at that; two 
cotton shirts and denim pants besides what his mother could 
perhaps make over from occasional old cast off materials. A 
pair of man's discarded heavy coarse boots of a former tenant 
of the house, found in the cellar and greased till soft enough 
to be worn, though much too large for a small boy, caused the 
town children many a time to jeer at him as "boots." Perhaps 
he did not earn more by not too carefully feeding the horse 
and cows and hogs ; cleaning the stables, milking, churning, 
cutting fire wood, working in the garden, hoeing corn in the 
field, picking winter apples, cooking, washing dishes, running 
errands, filling an open stone quarry, or working for three 
years in the field. 

In these years, from nine to twelve, as far as memory goes, 
not more than three months all told were given for school; 
one winter none at all ; one year it was a little more than four 
weeks ; and the third, less than two months. At home, the old 
patriarch indeed drilled him during the winter in the multipli- 
cation table and some simple exercises in arithmetic, set down 
on a slate — never in spelling; and that early neglect is still a 
felt loss. Reading had been previously picked up, but writing 
was an undiscovered art. The passionate old person, who in 
fury strikes a boy with a hickory broom, or a billet of wood 
R-5 



44 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



as thick as his arm, leaving blue, livid marks, or with his fist, 
or a napping hammer on the head, raising a lump on the skull 
as big as a walnut, is not likely to be successful in his disci- 
pline of a sturdy boy. Yet the mistaken old disciplinarian 
meant at times to be kind, and his training was at least meth- 
odical in habit, and saved the boy from bad associates and 
their evil influences. The seeming evil was in that respect 
overruled for good. 

Earnestly pious himself in his own way, yet the old elder 
never tried to teach the boy to pray. He was sent regularly 
to Sunday-school, never having missed a Sunday while in that 
family. During this time much of the New Testament be- 
came familiar from frequent reading in private and consider- 
able portions were committed to memory for each week's reci- 
tation in the class — and still live there. The library books of 
the Sunday-school Union were read with profit. This Was 
his best company. The church papers received in the house 
were never thought the right thing to be read by children. As 
to church attendance, when the services were in English, each 
fourth Sunday, it was our privilege to be there. It became a 
fixed habit, which was a pleasure, with also a possible profit 
and lasting benefit. The old people often conversed together 
in Pennsylvania-German, and took it for granted however that 
this as well as German preaching was beyond the boy's com- 
prehension. They even supposed that what was said between 
themselves in their language about this boy in his presence 
was not at all understood by him; and it was not for him to 
tell them that many words had already come to have meaning 
in his ears. Thus was often gathered the gist of what they 
discussed ; and it quickened him to pick up "Pennsylvania- 
Dutch." They and other relatives there in general seemed to 
aim at keeping him "under cow," as it was styled, that is, in 
slavish subjection and to under-value uniformly and ridicule 
all that was in him in thought, word or deed. 

In his sore trials he proposed to his mother, that as she was 
afraid to insist on better treatment for herself and him, he 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



45 



would run away from the place. Where to ? Ah, whither ? 
Anywhere. Strangers, even if hard and cruel, would surely 
be better and deal more kindly. But she feared the dangers 
that are sure to beset a boy, who to escape unduly severe re- 
straint wants too early to become his own master away from 
home. Better, she thought, bear the ills in patience, till the 
Lord makes a way of deliverance plain. The few oases of 
these tiresome years came in times of harvest, when for sev- 
eral weeks he could be with the other boys on the old farm, 
no matter how hard the work. And these short stays with 
mother were full of blessings. Besides, as the lonely child 
grew to be near twelve years old, the yoke seemed to become 
less fretting; and to his oppressors, his spirit became more 
defiant, which, strange to say, secured him measurable im- 
munity from some of the earlier harsh usage. But this how- 
ever in itself was not good for him. Had it continued in sub- 
sequent years, the boy might have grown more willful and 
possibly disobedient. The place, nevertheless, was not one 
where a proper check could be put upon a spirit, that while it 
needed friendly help and warming love, could also be trained 
to subjection in free obedience. But one cannot help thinking 
that, if the youth had been better managed and kindlier treated, 
his character then forming had been more symmetrical. The 
warped soul can never obliterate the marked effects of those 
sorrowful years. 

Referring no further, however, in detail to those seeming 
grievances, it were better even at this late date to give God 
thanks for the safe way in which He has led us, preparing for 
what was to come after. It came in time to be the full con- 
viction of those people that they could not bring me up to 
their idea of usefulness according to their notion ; and that my 
future had no promise for good to the family. So they con- 
sented to let me be tried in some other place; and the subject 
of care, was anxious for a trial with any other people. At 
the very outset a good name for industry, obedience and 
proper character must rise above the bad taint they had given 



4 6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



it. To be often called a redheaded woodpecker, brick top, re- 
proaches for his hair and freckles, was a charge and "an af- 
fliction" from which he could then make no escape. Another 
inherited cause for regret was the patronimic name, Russell, 
of which there was no other family in the whole community, 
and that was supposed by them to be in itself something to 
shrink from. Other little gnawing foxes among the vines, 
worse than these need not be named. In those early years all 
such things seemed a burden; worse than the grasshopper; 
and any change of place would be for me better. The poor 
soul therefore was joyful when a farmer desiring "a boy" of- 
fered three dollars a month for the summer, and in winter 
free boarding while attending school, for morning and even- 
ing work with cattle. The following winter was our first 
"free school" attendance. Dan Miller, a weaver's apprentice, 
on his way to school the last three months of his time, as he 
passed our place was heard singing to himself without know- 
ing he had a listener: 

"Strive to get learning before you get old, 
For wisdom is better than silver and gold." 

That awakened in the lonely boy the mystic stirring of soul 
that became a well-spring of life. Thanks for that simple 
singing ! 

At twelve years old accordingly my first wages began. Three 
dollars a month, or ten cents a day, made bright prospects. 
The first season's earnings were all carried and laid at once in 
my mother's lap. Working along with the men had seemed a 
new inspiration, making it easy and light. Helping at fence- 
making, picking stones, planting corn, feeding stock, driving 
cattle to and from pasture, riding to the mill with a bag of 
grain on horseback and returning with chopped feed, or flour, 
raking hay in the field or treading it in the mow, or harrowing 
with two horses ; all this, working along with others, made 
industry for me a new thing. 

With these conditions of better feeding and more cheerful 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



47 



surroundings in the new place, came determination to be faith- 
ful to service, which gave satisfaction to the employer, and 
dispelled the ill-omened prophecies and reported ■ previous 
worthlessness. The boy was somehow impressed that good 
character had to be made. In fact he felt that something was 
to be gained or lost, and this stirred his inmost soul to a hero- 
ism above his years, and the results fell on the right side. The 
spur to do well helped in covenant mercy to make public 
opinion for the obedient, industrious and reliable boy. From 
God and his mother's training came the truth that something 
depends on reputation well earned in virtue of faithfulness to 
duty. The energies consumed in athletics now, in dangerous 
contests, for football victories, had exercise enough in down- 
right hard work with no less gain to the physical organs. 

For the next summer season an increase of wages to four 
dollars a month made the case more like a man's share. Mow- 
ing grass with a scythe along with the men where the swarth 
was heavy; reaping with the old sickle and making a full 
hand with twelve harvesters ; binding after a cradler, pitching 
sheaves in the mow, or husking a row of corn on the stalk not 
cut off, along with the men on frosty mornings, gave him a 
place among big farm hands. What was wanting in the size 
of the now almost fourteen year old youth, was fully made up 
in pluck and satisfaction of scoring a success. His rank was 
settled as a good sturdy worker ; and for that, the farmer gave 
him an extra half dollar above the wages promised. It was 
a silent victory won. After that the way was easier by far. 

Jacob had a long way to travel from home, and a hard term 
of service among his ancestral kindred; but it was of the 
Lord's appointment for good ; suffering partly in return for 
his course towards his brother, and partly also in witness of 
the covenant promises made -sure to one who learned by hard 
experience to endure, so as to fit him for the inheritance. 
Seeming evils are divinely overruled for good, in the lives of 
our Lord's humblest children. As nothing comes by chance, 
what our heavenly Father brings about or permits is always 



4 8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the best. There are, however, some happenings which cannot 
be understood, except as received by faith. In the rough days 
of my early life, and many times through later years, there is 
much seeming contradiction in merely natural agents to the 
invisible rulings of divine love. Stoicism to bear ills, even in 
a child is no evidence of proper submisson to the gracous deal- 
ings meant always for good. It is to be part of the hereafter 
to untangle the threads found in beneficent overruling provi- 
dences. Highest happiness is to take all, in faith and patience. 

My mother in her straitened condition, was much attached 
to her own household effects ; some of them were dear by as- 
sociation. When we removed from the Little Cove, she had 
to leave on pledge with a neighbor among other stuff an old 
ten-plate stove. It was the first used in our family, and as 
stoves were rare articles in common families and of more 
relative value then than now, she was desirous to repossess 
that old family comforter. Accordingly when she had saved 
enough to pay the pledge, she sent back for "the things." It 
was a delightful trip for me then in the thirteenth year, to 
drive twenty odd miles in a springless old-fashioned one horse 
wagon, made in fac-simile style of the great Conestoga beds, 
to bring over the redeemed goods. 

From the Marsh, the road through Greencastle, Mercers- 
burg and the Gap was not strange ; but it was a good day's 
travel for a farm horse, and though the start was made be- 
times in the morning, it was nearly night when Squire Ten- 
nally's house was reached. The road passed our former home 
in the Cove and stirred sorrow that the years of earlier tramps 
and plays in mountain and along stream were gone from me 
forever. It now seems, the articles for which this expedition 
was undertaken, were hardly worth the money and the long 
haul involved in their recovery. The stove which was the 
main item sent for, had by that time two plates broken and 
was otherwise in bad condition. But mended by a blacksmith, 
it was still serviceable. In fact it became my heating and 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



49 



cooking fixture years afterwards when boarding myself and a 
fellow student at college. 

Having in the evening settled the financial matters with the 
squire and engaged to come later for the cow, a sound sleep 
and early breakfast prepared "Old Bill" and me for our re- 
turn. The horse was quite willing to bid good-bye to the 
mountain, instinctively starting at a better gait on the home- 
ward trip. But while yet on the western slope and before 
reaching the top of the Knob, an accident occurred which 
might have been serious. The strap at the top of the hames 
broke, the traces fell loose, and the wagon began a rapid 
down hill backward run. The breeching drew the horse along, 
till his irregular struggles to free himself turned the front 
wheels the wrong way, and the hind wheels ran over the lower 
side of the road and began to descend the mountain side. This 
wrong course of things stopped by the tail end jamming 
against a sapling and one wheel striking an obstructing rock. 
The rearward runaway ended and the relief brought freer 
breath. I was saved, the horse was saved, and the wagon, 
little damaged, stood still. 

How to recover now from the mishap, to regain the road 
and to draw the wagon up the steep grade was a problem for 
the boy driver. Far from any house and no passers by likely 
to come, it looked hopeless. Taking account of resources, a 
stiff piece of leather rather short was found looped to one of 
the bow staples, and that was all that could be utilized. Its 
slit end was fastened to the top of one of the hames and the 
other end just reached to the second; but its stiffness made it 
next to imposible to tie a good knot. The heavy pull in draw- 
ing the wagon up to the road might cause it to slip. By hand 
rubbing it became more pliable. The horse by this time was 
rested enough to do his best. With a decided tone of encour- 
agement the word "Git up, Bill," was given for the hard pull. 
He was equal to the necessity and brought the wagon again 
into the road. A thankful heart for the deliverance we went on 
our way rejoicing. The horse in better kelter from rest made 



50 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



up the time lost, so that before night our trip safely ended. A 
worthless piece of old strap, long unused was the means of 
relief from the mishap and further danger. Other places on 
the mountain road were more steep, where wagon, horse and 
driver might have been dashed to more serious harm. Thanks 
for mercies known and unknown, and escapes from dangers 
seen and unseen are due to our gracious Guardian. 

One such escape from another near and fatal accident com- 
ing to memory, may be mentioned in this connection. It oc- 
curred one evening on a return trip from a collecting tour in 
behalf of Grace church, Pittsburg. The Clarion region up the 
Allegheny river could then only be reached conveniently by 
the Allegheny valley railroad to Kittanning. The West Penn 
was not yet made. At Terentum station on the east side of the 
river they crossed by ferry to a campmeeting. A car full of 
people was left on the siding ready for the return of passen- 
gers to the city and was soon coupled to our evening down 
going train. Rounding a sharp curve cut through a hill jut- 
ting out to the river at considerable height above the water, a 
sudden bump came — and looking back the rear car, containing 
campmeeting people was seen swerving outward until it top- 
pled from the track, broke its connecting link with the train 
and went whirling over the rocky embankment, rolling over 
and over repeatedly till it reached the river brink. Our part 
of the train remained safe on the railroad track. 

Immediately the train had been stopped. We ran back to 
the scene of the disaster. The momentum of speed and weight 
of the train at the point of the sharp curve had hurled the 
hindmost car and passengers from the rails, and the sudden 
twist broke the connecting link and detached that part of the 
train from us just in time to save all the other cars from the 
same terrible dash down upon the craggy fresh quarried rocks 
thrown over from the side of the cut. The fated car overturn- 
ing a number of times in the descent, crushing its top off, 
breaking all its windows, and seats, spilling out every person 
in it, lodged itself empty and open topped with its bottom and 



ENDURING THE YOKE. 



51 



forward end in the river. Along the steep hillside scattered 
were thirty-one injured passengers, bruised, wounded and cut 
with limbs broken and one was already dead. After all these 
years, the eye can still see that car going over the brink to ter- 
rific destruction, from which we were saved; and that awful 
scream of the locomotive's warning has many times since gone 
through me like a knife, when such sounds reach me in the 
trains, calling for sudden stops. But in many thousands of 
miles of railroading, no other accident has come visibly nearer 
to me. 

Another escape was mine. Returning from Boston on a 
Long Island Sound steamer, one night, the saloon became 
black with smoke, and the alarm of fire made it very threat- 
ening for an hour. But fortunately the fire was subdued and 
that near danger was averted, for which of course all gave 
thanks. In the country, such mishaps as falling from trees, or 
from a ladder, or thrown from a horse, or having one's skull 
bone split open with an axe have happened, but have not been 
fatal to me. Many times Israel could refer its special deliverance 
to the Lord. It is of His mercy. But I cannot account any more 
for these escapes from seen danger, than for the manifold un- 
seen deliverances with which He has dotted life's way. Nor can 
it be settled why this divine care has been bestowed on one 
who has been of such small use in the great kingdom of Christ 
among men. It is a matter for regret and of disappointment, 
that he has not better understood or more wisely turned to 
account the manifold lessons set before him in the divine ad- 
ministration of providence, in which the dear Lord has made 
known His care. 



V. 



Working Upward. 

WELL, the work in the country served its purpose in giv- 
ing vigor to the body and forming habits of attention 
to duty. It was, in fact, every way a great gain on the former 
place. Circumstances changed and brought no little advan- 
tage. Only boys cannot see the end from the beginning — no, 
nor men. 

By the end of the second year's labor on the farm and the 
gain of a good reputation for industry and fidelity, a merchant 
began to think a lad of that sort might be made useful in his 
general store. That offer was therefore made and so the 
store was the next place for the following three years. Dur- 
ing much of that time the latest underclerk was not outside the 
town, and seldom absent from the counter. Except for sev- 
eral months each winter, after sixteen or seventeen cords of 
dry hickory wood had been sawed into three or four pieces 
and split for the stoves and piled up in ranks in the cellar, re- 
quiring several weeks of extra hard work along with other 
duties, he was allowed a short term to attend free school, then 
recently established in Pennsylvania. When quitting time 
came at the end of one short term, on taking away his books, 
the teacher, a Lutheran, said it was "a dam pity" that no fur- 
ther opportunity were given such a boy. 

The place at Sunday-school was regularly filled, but the 
teacher was not congenial, and the superintendent was contin- 
ually carping and scolding. Among other regular weekday 
duties was the care of a horse and cow which in summer had 
to be taken daily to the pasture about a mile into the country. 
On these rides it was a boyish trick to stand at times on the 
horse's back; and once the old fox hunter vaulted unexpect- 
edly over the bars, landed the rider clear over his head into 
the pasture field, without the least harm. A much surprised 



WORKING UPWARD. 



53 



unhorsed imitation circus rider! This apprenticeship to busi- 
ness was in some respects rigid, and yet not the best for a lad 
making his way in the world. There was no sympathy in the 
relation between the employer and myself. Business was his 
main object, and my necessity was to get on as far as possible 
without much plan, or wholesome advice. Youth must have 
its checks and balances. These are hard to find in fair equality 
except in a Christian family, where the warm side of life can 
be called into normal activity. 

Always regarded as a "poor boy," that fact generally put 
the junior clerk at disadvantage with the others employed in 
the store, and the head of the house himself who was rather 
overbearing and snarling, which by no means relieved the sit- 
uation. It became irksome to be so long the "under-strapper" 
among the rest. With purchasers the relations were always 
pleasant and agreeable. The owner even said he had a 
"knack" for business. Here was at least a good place also to 
study character and note the difference between people. De- 
ception, dishonesty, lying, grasping and stealing, as well as 
honesty came to the surface from people. One of the rules of 
the house was that the less desirable bargains were first if pos- 
sible to be put off, if poor and uninfluential customers were 
buying. We were not instructed or trained to tell falsehoods 
in order to effect a sale of the goods ; but it was definitely 
taught that the defects and disadvantages of the articles were 
to be covered and as much as possible concealed from the 
eyes of the buyers. Correct weights and measures were of 
course to be the rule. All must seem open, honest and fair; 
but it was not perhaps on the whole in fullest sense done on 
the golden rule. The inwardness of these dealings had much 
to do generally in the methods with others. The civil law 
stops with the buyer's eyes ; strict integrity looks at both sides 
of a business bargain. 

Altogether the place and the business were not at that time 
attractive to me, and another calling was chosen, giving chiefly 
more personal freedom. Cabinet-making, or general furniture 



54 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



building by hand was the trade selected, to which little influ- 
ence outside of personal choice seemed to lead. It was indeed 
harder work for the day in some respects ; but it had its free 
evenings for social intercourse with boys and men. Before 
long a bedstead, a cradle, a cupboard, a bureau or a coffin 
could be turned out by the hand labor of the new apprentice, 
in tolerable and satisfactory finish. For very common funer- 
als, or in bad weather, it was appointed me to direct — some of 
which in the mountain district were exceedingly distasteful. 
A misunderstanding with the "boss" on a plain question of 
justice and right, terminated my apprenticeship in a year and 
a half, and dissolved the cabinet-making contract, which also 
cost me $30 according to bargain — a whole year's wages. 
Squire Flanegan said when asked : "You can collect that 
money, but it might be bad for you in after years ; as you 
would be ever ready to rush into lawsuits. He that takes the 
sword shall perish by the sword." On this advice the de- 
frauded youth acted wisely. 

The squire's good counsel was followed then, and many 
times since. A new start empty-handed, however, had now to 
be made. For immediate use a temporary plan was adopted. 
A walking of fifteen miles to Chambersburg in order to buy a 
gallon of varnish, which was not kept on sale then in our town, 
and this along with a few fixtures set me up for repairing and 
dressing anew old furniture. Trips on foot through the coun- 
try soliciting such work were hard and often discouraging. 
But it put money into the pocket ; and in a few weeks there 
was enough earned to pay for the last year's loss, and also for 
a winter's school term. Hitherto my wages went to mother; 
now they were for personal use. The next spring a situation 
in a store was offered me by a sick partner to take his place 
at one hundred and fifty dollars and board. This seemed like 
a big thing in those times. But in the fall of that year and be- 
fore the bargain had ended, a change in the business firm 
threw me out, by a new partner taking the place and the con- 
tract was broken with me to my loss. Left again at sea, it 
resulted in several months in a select school. 



WORKING UPWARD. 



55 



STARTING FOR MORE EDUCATION — COLLEGE. 

Fifty-seven dollars saved from the remaining portion of the 
last year's salary and earnings, and some "chicken money" 
previously laid by from the product of a hen and two goslings 
given me by an aunt in the country made some available funds 
to be properly appropriated — and it was decided to spend it 
for educational use. The hen by the end of the second sea- 
son had raised seven turkeys and two sets of chickens. The 
two geese had also multiplied. All were now sold at Hagers- 
town which helped to form a "nest egg" for a college fund. 
Persuaded mainly by my eldest sister in the spring of 1845, I 
started to take at least one term in the preparatory school of 
Marshall College. As yet no general plan for a better educa- 
tion was well formed. It grew larger after it was once begun. 
There was not much, however, within near reach. It would 
have staggered faith and perhaps stumped courage to' have 
looked farther ahead. Nothing as yet foreshadowed a college 
course. The dream of such possibility came later, and even 
the "mystic stirrings" were not yet fully understood. 

A college course in fact seemed then for me as far off as 
the stars. But an entrance to it came unexpectedly. It was 
by a short cut, a forced preparation of the seventeen weeks of 
that summer session, in order to arrange for a change to be 
then made in the college year. These seventeen weeks were 
devoted mainly to Latin and Greek, without much plan or sys- 
tematic guidance. Method came as an after thought, with 
results perhaps fortunate or unfortunate, as you look at it. 
Without personal application or request on my part the faculty 
admitted me, on probation, or trial, from the Preparatory to 
the Freshman class of thirty-one fairly good students, all 
much better prepared than myself. It was an inviting bid for 
me, however, to come back in the fall. 

This decided me; and the plunge was made into the college 
course. But it was a dark day for me to prepare on my own 
resources translations from Greek of thirty lines of Homer. 
That whole winter session was indeed a daily stumble. Much of 



56 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the first year was for me in the clouds, and it required plodding 
to reach the clear. My funds ran low too after buying needed 
books. Economy led me to preparing my own meals at a cost 
of sixty-nine cents a week, to eke out the necessary allowance. 
It was not just like the widow's meal barrel either. 

Mentioning cheap boarding, this is how mine cost sixty odd 
cents a week during part of the college course. There were 
several "students' boarding clubs," that is, they rented a house, 
hired a woman to cook and keep things in order, while the 
members of the club out of a common treasury met the run- 
ning expenses at a little over a dollar a week. My means, 
however, were too limited even to justify me taking member- 
ship in one of these, except later for about a year. A more 
private boarding scheme was at first provided for myself in 
my room. It cost me less than ten cents a day. Another stu- 
dent in an adjoining room, hearing of my success, asked to be 
taken into commons as a fellow boarder on equal shares. Then 
we two became a small club — I chief cook, and he did the er- 
rands, going out for the few things we could afford to buy, 
and also did the washing of the dishes. Mrs. Kreps, a good 
friend, baked bread for us weekly out of a barrel of flour 
bought by us. The sugar was rather neatly measured by the 
spoonful with jealous eyes on each other, in the daily use as the 
special luxury of the table. The meat, when there was any, 
the butter, the bread, the corn cakes made of coarse, unsifted 
meal mixed with water and salt, with a few potatoes baked on 
a ten plate stove, were all sparingly used. And one cord of 
hickory wood was made to last for the whole winter for heat- 
ing and cooking. It was cut up, carried up to the fourth 
story, and stingily burned by the head cook. 

Canned goods found on sale now in all the grocery stores 
were then entirely unknown. Tomatoes, corn, peas, beef, fish 
and fruits were not as now prepared and kept on sale. Few 
other things for our use and within purse reach could in that 
town be procured, and there was no market. There was no 
meat store and no vegetables now usually found at any of the 



WORKING UPWARD. 



57 



groceries. Once a man from the North Mountain brought 
potatoes by the bushel for sale to the college building. They 
looked nice, like the Neshannocks, the main variety then best 
known — except the Mercers. We bought a bushel and a half. 
But the perverse patlanders would not get done when cooked 
ever so much. Boil them and they remained hard and tough. 
Roast them in the stove, or on coals, or in ashes, and still they 
remained as unyielding as roots and almost as tasteless. My 
cooking skill and reputation suffered every time they were 
put upon the table. Only one way we reduced them so as to 
be able to masticate them. That was to cut them in round 
slices like silver dollars and bake them as cakes on the hot 
stove plate bare, first on one side till blistered, then turn them 
over and do the other side likewise, to be eaten with salt. My 
fellow boarder had a fondness for potatoes as well as for water 
and salt mixed corn cakes as a cure for dyspepsia. Thus for- 
tunately the whole bad purchase of that lot of woody tubers 
was finally used up, for we were too economical to throw even 
the uncookable substance away. 

My partner in this little club admitted and admired my 
genius and acquired skill for cooking, and to equal my ser- 
vices, he set out to learn the high art of washing dishes. He 
was in the class one year in advance of ours, and was known 
for his oddities. He invented an alarm clock to waken him 
early before the ringing of the rising bell. The basis of his 
design was an old English watch, with the face left open and 
a thread attached to the hour hand. This thread at the other 
end was tied through a hole in an old style large copper cent 
which was laid on the end of a billet of stove wood, so neatly 
adjusted on some other heavy sticks, and poised so that at the 
exact hour intended for his alarm call, the watch's hand pulled 
the cent off the equilibrium ; then the top stick thus becoming 
unbalanced fell, and that knocked down all the other heavier 
parts of the works. All tumbling from the edge of the table 
to the floor made a rousing racket, awakening also the tired 
sleepers in the adjoining rooms — and nearly all others within 



58 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



reach of the thundering thud and rattle got awake mad. Some 
of the lazier students, who did not care to be disturbed so 
early, complained to the faculty of the nuisance ; but the ma- 
chinery was not thrown out of gear, and they in time got used 
to the unseemly early music. 

This same man, after he left college, tried to invent a pat- 
ent pump. His device was to use a coil of lead pipe measuring 
a little more in length than would be required to reach the 
bottom of the well. Then once starting the flow of water 
raised first by suction, exhausting the air in the coiled pipe 
placed at the top of the ground near the well, it was intended, 
according to his idea of the syphon in hydrostatics, to con- 
tinue to lift the equal weight column of the contents of the well 
from its lowest depth, for man's use and convenience above. 
Like many other patents, the flaw in the theory, violating na- 
ture's laws, prevented its success, and he switched off into other 
visionary ventures. He was also fully convinced that the Lord 
would send him a wife, in response to prayer. He soon in a va- 
cation met a fine young lady answering his notions ; and after 
repeatedly visiting her and holding prayer with her before the 
termination of each evening call, his ardent advances led him 
to kiss her and then suddenly were at last chilled by ascertain- 
ing that she was already another man's wife, a grass widow. 
She had been introduced as "my daughter." And then she 
proposed to get a divorce and marry him. On my earnest ad- 
vice, he withdrew his suit and asked the Lord for another, 
and later married his aunt by law, not by blood. 

The following vacation I painted a house and sold books, 
with a profit from this last work alone of forty-one dollars. 
Book peddling was a mean business, meeting with unkind 
treatment and even once having dogs set upon me. Next win- 
ter session, my class of forty fellow students in Phrenology 
lectures at one dollar each helped the purse. Salary as Hall 
Janitor for our literary society also brought aid to the income 
account. The following spring several months again were 
spent in a store. But that broke into the term time, which was 



WORKING UPWARD. 



59 



a loss to me, causing a slight falling behind in class standing. 
By this time too, the extra earnings and other scraps of help 
were all, when the junior class half advanced was reached. 

My sister still the more urged me by all means to struggle 
on and "go through" the college course. But how ? "Trust in 
the Lord and do good ; so shalt thou dwell in the land and 
verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; 
and He shall give thee the desire of thine heart. Commit thy 
way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it 
to pass." Ps. 37 : 3-5. This was my stay and help in the 
darkest days, all through the trying years. It has also helped 
others. 

Applying for a small loan, a relative argued against it on the 
uncertainties before a college boy; and advised him to spend 
no more time and money in expensive study. As a clincher, he 
offered me a partnership without capital in his paying busi- 
ness. To his surprise, the kindly meant advice and offer were 
respectfully declined. Finally on good security, a small loan 
from him, he said, might be obtained. If the student were to 
die before paying him, the note would still be good. So the 
first loan was not large, nor did others following grow big 
afterwards. In the last college year, along with holding my 
place in the senior class, a small salary and board were made 
by rendering service in a town store, besides reciting the re- 
maining short term with the class. So that at graduation my 
standing was fair, taking the second honor in a good class. In 
another year and a half, by teaching a high school in Mary- 
land, the whole loan was discharged. Help from our family 
in many ways, had enabled me to work my way through col- 
lege. My laundry bill was saved by aid of sisters. Privation, 
self-denial and persecution for poverty's sake helped. Reward 
came too in college and literary society honors, worth it all. 
Our family triumphed in my success. Probational admission 
on seventeen weeks' preparation was a spur for me to try hard 
the first year to make up for defects in a preparatory course. 
It is an achievement of no small merit for a friendless boy by 
R-6 



6o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



persevering efforts of his own to pass successfully through a 
college course with honor to himself and family. "Funds he 
had none," except earned or borrowed. 

Recurring at this point of memory, let me say, the course 
was begun in the Preparatory in the spring of 1845, and in 
the fall of 1853 the Synod, after an examination on the course 
of the Seminary studies, not yet half finished, gave me license 
to preach. Altogether about eight years — seemingly fair 
time ; but during the course, over three of these years had been 
devoted to teaching as tutor in the college and as high school 
principal, besides about one year and a half given in piecemeal 
to business employment to eke out stringent conditions of self- 
support. So that the broken and doubled up course was not 
much more than half what is usually taken to go through the 
required curriculum. No wonder there is yet felt lacking in 
some respects a full sense of mastery. 

One beneficiary student, to my knowledge, received the usual 
annual aid for eleven years — almost three times as long as the 
crowded time for my consolidated term for that work. My 
short and crimped up course was certainly a great drawback 
to thoroughness nevertheless, and this handicapped me in the 
class, as well as did the other lost weeks by the several ex- 
tended absences necessary for money getting, away to the end 
of college days. My few odd months in the common schools 
before coming to the college had been of service to me in 
English, but as to the classics and the rest needed for a good 
foundation, my entrance into college was a venture into the 
unknown. By the end of the Freshman year the probationary 
condition of my class standing was removed, and though my 
grade then was not high it was at least regular. In the Soph- 
omore year, eight of us in the class stood in what was called 
the "first grade." That aroused of course some jealousy, envy 
and class trouble. Some charged that those marked higher 
than they had been mutually helped in preparing the lessons. 
That story was partly true, but it shut me up afterwards close 
alone thenceforward in my own locked room with the key- 



WORKING UPWARD. 



61 



hole stuffed ; which threw me absolutely on my own resources 
in all class preparations — a sure way to advance one's standing 
still further each session — and the others could not now say 
that any credit for it was due to their help. 

In mathematics the professor once said, only six of the 
juniors knew what they were doing in conic sections, and but 
two of us saw clearly through their studies in calculus. The 
professor in languages specially complimented me in a written 
certificate for "correct, clear, apt, and literal translations." 
Dr. Nevin himself criticised my senior oration before the 
faculty and students as "bold, free, correct and independent 
thinking." At graduation my final mark was said to be first 
for only the senior year; but the low grade in the early 
part of the course brought down my average standing so that 
another was rated higher on the whole course and took the 
first honor of the class. Hence, the second honor, the saluta- 
tory, therefore, fell to me. It was a glad, though an humble 
day for our whole family, when this successful ending came 
for them to share. It was more than was expected at the out- 
set. In the senior year, the Anniversary Address of the Di- 
agnothian Society, its first honor was awarded to me — possibly 
in part for the long service on the Building Committee of the 
new Hall. The two last years my society duty was on debate 
almost every week. 

On our way home from the college at the end of a winter 
term along in the later "forties," as the stage was descending 
the hill on the turnpike west of the Conococheague, we noticed 
a procession of men and women marching around a barn sit- 
uated on a farm east of the stream and to the northward of 
the road. These were the split off branch of the Mormons, 
who under the lead of Sidney Rigdon had come east to start 
anew after the break up of Navon. This section of the sect ex- 
pected to rival the larger part that was finally settled at Salt 
Lake in Utah. They were at first perhaps several hundred 
strong, as seemed from the numbers there marching. 

They had bought a large slate land farm about a mile west 



62 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



of Greencastle. The price was $14,000, and a good portion of 
the purchase money as reported had been paid over. They had 
at the start of course no means of income from the farm, and 
they huddled together as best they could in the house, the barn 
and other farm buildings, living on meagre fare. It must have 
been a crowded settlement even for the time being. Very soon 
the process of disintegration, however, began, and the num- 
bers decreased gradually, leaving more room for those still re- 
maining. 

Much reorganizing work was needed to be projected in or- 
der to bring the disturbed swarm of the bee hive community 
into working condition for the expected success and growth 
like that which had been known for the whole body in the west- 
Once set agoing, the increase it was hoped from converts cast- 
ing into the common treasury, whatever of this world's goods 
they could thus devote, would perhaps enable them to do better 
financially every year. First of all, family relationships were to 
be readjusted. New wives were to be selected. After daily 
devotional exercises, they were to march around the big barn 
in scanty undress, and in this act, we were told, the spirit of 
selection would indicate what particular wives to choose. That 
was the pious business they were at, when we noticed them in 
the unique procession as above told. What progress was made 
each day in that sort of religion it is not given us to tell. But 
as a matter of course much disappointment and dissatisfaction 
occurred and in what followed the control of the parts was lost 
by the leaders. In a short time the whole community fell to 
pieces, and the farm went back to the original owners ; and 
Greencastle was saved from a religious and social pest. Never- 
theless converts are still made in places near us, in our South 
mountains. My boarder and a converted Jew had a mission 
Sunday-school in New Africa, a negro hamlet at the base of 
the North mountain. They took me along one Sunday after- 
noon. In a walk of about three miles across the country we 
reached the place. A goodly number of colored pople were as- 
sembled in a long log house. After the "exercises" were open- 



WORKING UPWARD. 



63 



ed, the two leaders went up the mountain further to visit a man 
who had been cut in a fight during the week before ; and they 
left me in charge of the meeting. When the lessons were over 
and a short address given, in the absence of the two leaders, 
one of the older brethren asked me whether they might sing, 
while waiting the return of the leaders. Consent having been 
given, they waited for me to select a hymn and suggested that 
it had best be a long one. Then they also said, "But you must 
raise the tune." That was a new thing for me to do. It was, 
however, undertaken, to what was supposed to be a familiar 
"long meter." And then the singing began with many hearty 
voices in full isWell of song. 

Before the third line of the first stanza was reached they had 
switched me off and struck in on the track of something else ; 
and thence forward every line seemed different and a "new 
measure" one. It was plain to me they had "ran away" en- 
tirely from my timid lead. But the glorious song or anthem, 
or chant, swelled on in full flow, no matter what new strain 
was struck; and so without my further aid it continued from 
verse to verse with ever varying melody rising to the hallelu- 
jah chorus in the finale. Then the old colored brother turned 
to me with a very pleased smile and said, "That was a beauti- 
ful new tune, brother." The missionary leaders just then re- 
turned, to my great relief. 

It was my privilege also to attend an afternoon Sunday- 
school held by two students at the school house on the hill 
above Heister's mill. They edified the teachers and scholars 
by tackling each other in a widely contrary explanation of 
what was the exact mode of circumcision. One being of Jew- 
ish birth had the decided advantage, experimentally, of the 
Gentile in telling what the work was. Young missionaries 
may inaptly fall as far short in their crude efforts to teach new 
theology for Bible truths. But the Lord guards His gospel 
from the fearful mistakes of weaklings. 

All the offices of the literary society, from Monitor to Presi- 
dent, fell in course of time to my lot. The vice President was 



6 4 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



ex-officio prosecutor for all cases of immorality of members. 
While in the discharge of this duty, it was my privilege to be 
the best abused person in the society by several defendants. 
But their trials and convictions had the effect of redeeming the 
society's good name from reproach as compared with the 
"pious Goetheans," and raised the standard of pure morals for 
the Diagnothians. Though it cost me persecutions and trouble, 
such fidelity to the right always results in good fruit. Some 
special rewards came afterwards from the seed sown. One 
was an election to deliver the dedicatory address when the new 
Diagnothian Hall at Lancaster was finished, to take the place 
of the first one left by the removal from Mercersburg. 

It must be regarded in those days as a good fortune all 
through his after life, for a young man at the beginning of his 
college life to become a regular member of the Diagnothian 
Literary Society. This has a tendency to impress its excellent 
original high toned character and peculiar type upon those 
who come to partake of its high and genial spirit. From this 
fact, its members through all after years come to have more 
or less of the outcome of its inner training traceable through 
subsequent time. Gerhart, Bomberger, Harbaugh, Cessna, 
Hartley, Killinger, Hartranft, Maybury, Gloninger, the Cob- 
bentzes, Levan, the Dubbses, Bowman, the Nevins, a good lot 
of Baers, and a long list of the Apples, stand close to the earlier 
years. Good taste and respect for modesty forbids the mention 
of many other Diagnothians of more recent years, all under the 
old motto : Virtue Crowns Her Followers. 

The fraternities, it is said, have broken down since the re- 
moval of much of the old society spirit of the college in its 
early days. This was altogether an unknown element former- 
ly. Dr. Steiner and myself were once appointed on a com- 
mittee by the Alumni Society to confer with Dr. Nevin as to 
the propriety of having a fraternity Greek letter Chapter open- 
ed in Marshall College. But the President's conservatism 
advised against the proposed project, and it was dropped for 
the time. 



VI. 



The Society Halls 



HERE is a glory belonging to the memory of the Society 



Halls, built by the students at Mercersburg, that can 
never attach to those at Lancaster, except by inheritance. 

In the spring of 1845, when my studies were begun in the 
Preparatory at Mercersburg, the two literary societies were 
respectively engaged in building their halls. It was a new thing 
in college history for the "boys" to undertake the erection of 
their own separate buildings for the accommodation of the 
several literary societies, in which to hold their regular exer- 
cises at the weekly meetings; and also to provide suitable 
rooms for libraries and museum collections of scientific, geo- 
logical, metalurgic, fossilized and historical specimens gathered 
mainly by the zeal and energy of the individual members. It 
marked a peculiar character of the self-helpful spirit of the 
old Marshall College students in those early days of compari- 
tive poverty, that they assumed such great and heavy responsi- 
bilities, each society incurring the cost of thousands of dollars. 
It was part of the genius of the college. 

The college buildings proper were not then as yet all put up- 
The straitened finances of the infant institution had so far 
built only the Preparatory and a few houses for some of the 
professors' residences. Rooms for the college classes were 
then provided in the theological seminary building, which was 
the first necessity provided for after the institutions were lo- 
cated in the little village nestled at the foot of the North moun- 
tain. Grounds for the college structure were, however, se- 
cured at the south side of the town. Parts of this ground were 
allotted in the plan to each of the two literary societies for the 
purpose of erecting by their own efforts a hall for each one's 
respective separate use, the expense for which the young men 
courageously undertook to bear. How the idea of such a grand 




66 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



project originated it is hard now to determine. But it is worthy 
of record that a few impecuneous students of the new infant 
college had independent spirit enough for the hitherto unheard 
of enterprise of raising in those days of small things among 
themselves and their friends, anywhere from eight thousand to 
twelve thousand dollars for this arm of the promising institu- 
tion. There was some inspiration in Dr. Nevin's great mind 
working among the boys for the age. 

His far-reaching conception had made the one main condi- 
tion that the two society halls must be "alike in external ap- 
pearance," so that there could be no invidious rivalry. In con- 
sideration that this condition be observed in good faith, the 
grounds, required to be the site for a classic hall to be built on 
either side of the intended main college structure, were donated 
but not deeded in fee by the Board of Trustes to each society. 
And some bricks which had been burnt for the intended college 
building, but which could not for sometime be put to that use, 
were also given to the societies for their hall buildings. I have 
the official letter of the Board's Secretary, Dr. P. W. Little, 
which made this grant to the Diagnothians, who by its condi- 
tions were to be the owners of the Hall to be built for them- 
selves at their own expense and efforts, at no cost to the col- 
lege. The venture for our hall cost us between five thousand 
and six thousand dollars. The plans in general design were 
after classic Greek architecture — two storied with wide portico 
extending the whole width of the front, and dressed stone steps 
to reach the vestibule on the second floor from outside. The 
story below had a large anteroom, and then came the long li- 
brary room, and on the other side a similar one for the 
museum. 

The auditorium was on the main floor above. Massive col- 
umns, six in number, stood along the portico at the top of the 
front steps. The other society's hall had wooden outside ; ours 
had dressed stone in solid masonry. The columns had highly 
ornamental Ionic capitals on fluted stems. Internally the hall 
could be arranged according to the taste and will of each 



THE SOCIETY HALLS. 



67 



society. There could be differences here as well as in the 
spirit and genius of either society. The style of Fresco-paint- 
ing showed the generic difference ; and the Diagnothians con- 
tended that theirs was strictly classic, historical and symbolic, 
with the old poets and philosophers represented in their de- 
signs. In the early public contests with their rivals the Diag- 
nothians had scored eight victories to one. Then the college 
authorities abolished this method of rivalry in public; but re- 
peatedly whenever the other society got saucy if it were too 
festivait, was challenged to petition for a repeal 6i the inhibi- 
tion of the public contests. But they never consented, always 
hedging behind, the standing rule. 

The Goethean Hall was built first; and it was found that 
the proportions in the finished auditorium, though ample for 
present use, were not elegant and symmetrical in looks. Taking 
this into account, in order to avoid a similar mistake, the 
Diagnothians resolved to add five feet to the length of their 
proposed hall. This intention was made public by unwise party 
boasting, and was hence strenuously resisted in stout protest 
to the Faculty and Board of Trustees, on the part of the Goeth- 
eans. The main reason given in formal pretext was because it 
would break the compact requiring the externals of both halls 
to be alike ; but really, and in fact, because it would be a per- 
manent advantage to the Diagnothians, who claimed that they 
should not be made to suffer disadvantage to their hall during 
the ages for the mistake already made in the hall of their rivals- 
The only way to meet the issue was either to take five feet off 
the foundation of the Diagnothian hall foundation now already 
begun, or to add five feet to the Goethean hall, just finished. 
The Goetheans were stubbornly punctillious as to the existing 
lawful agreement, and the Diagnothians fiercely unyielding as 
to the benefit so easily to get. The absolute size of the halls 
had not been fixed when the Goetheans built theirs. But the 
irresistable had met the immovable. A small rebellion began. 

Nightly parades to a man, of the opposing parties, for some 
time made the town streets lively. General public sympathy 



68 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



as well as common reason seemed to be with the Diagnothians- 
This made them bold. War was declared. "Five feet or no 
Hall/' was pasted up. Work on the building, however, was 
stopped. Dr. Nevin sent for the Building Committee and the 
leaders. If he and they had been more reasonable a wiser con- 
clusion might have been more easily reached. As it was, it 
nearly cost the college sixty-five students on the Diagnothian 
roll. The ultimatum was : 5*«&-mission or L%-mission. Better 
judgment through friendly influence finally prevailed. Peace 
was restored in great humiliation but without loss of dignity 
or self-respect, and the halls in external measurement were 
built alike ; but the Diagnothians got good stone steps solidly 
built and fluted columns with highly ornamental carved capi- 
tals. This made the Diagnothian Hall cost about fifteen hun- 
dred dollars more than the plainer Hall at the southern end of 
the college grounds. The wooden steps of the Goetheans soon 
fell down, and by accident the Hall itself later was burned to 
ashes. 

All the members of the society cheerfully undertook to do 
something towards securing funds for the building of the hall. 
Family friends and honorary members were solicited to make 
contributions. Some were more successful than others. Youth- 
ful and inexperienced collectors of funds sometimes met with 
rebuffs that were humiliating. In one case, my personal 
honesty was called into question. Hon. Abbott Laurence, one 
of our honorary members at Boston, though a liberal hearted 
man, had not heard of such a thing as a literary hall built by 
the under-graduates of a college. When, therefore, my letter 
of application for a donation reached him he took it as a 
Dutchman's scheme to raise money under false pretense for 
personal use, and in a kindly admonition advised me to leave 
off such unworthy tricks, for if a habit like that were allowed 
to grow, a dishonest life would be sure to follow. This re- 
sponse cut to the quick ; but it was one of those instances where 
you must suffer if misunderstood in doing self-denying work. 

Other cases were more encouraging. Among these was a 



THE SOCIETY HALLS. 



69 



beautiful autograph letter to me from Gen. Winfield Scott, 
Commander-in-chief of the United States army, in which he 
inclosed a handsome contribution. John Ouincy Adams also 
sent an autograph letter acknowledging his election to mem- 
bership. Where the project was known it met with favor. In 
a trip for the purpose to Philadelphia and Baltimore, my list 
was enlarged. Hon. James Buchanan, afterwards President, 
and Gov. F. R. Shunk became personally interested, and our 
acquaintance with them and many others grew from the work 
in hand. But at the best, it was an unwelcome service of which 
the larger part of the society grew tired and ceased. For my 
own part, it was a training preparation for the greater work 
afterwards put into my hands — that of collecting more than 
eight thousand dollars by my personal canvass and solicitation 
for the building of Grace Church, Pittsburgh, from the Re- 
formed people in other places. The halls at Lancaster, built 
also for the Societies, did not cost such membership labor nor 
yield such glory from self-sacrifice in the cause. Only one 
such experience as that at Mercersburg can come in the course 
of any generation's history. 

The ''Freshman Commencement" of our class in 1846 was 
an unusual incident in the college history. Instead of the haz- 
ing spirit, a more civilized and self-respecting course of con- 
duct was cultivated. The lordly seniors, it is true, had been 
rather hard on us "low down barbarians." But waiting our 
time, we resolved to take them down a peg by a flank move- 
ment. The time set for this was to be the night before they 
were to deliver their graduating addresses. By shrewd 
management the title of most of their subjects for speeches 
was beforehand obtained. These were assigned on a printed 
program to a number of Freshmen named in the list, and six 
members of our class were chosen to be actual speakers on 
original subjects at our mock-commencement the night before 
the day of graduation for the Seniors. Of course, all the 
topics of the Seniors printed on the Freshman program for 
burlesque were not to be publicly discussed, according to an 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



agreement with Dr. Nevin, who thereupon allowed us to hold 
our exercises ; so those to whom they were assigned of course 
were to be excused in our program. 

A mock faculty had to be made up of men from our class, 
from President to Tutor, in order that the whole dignity of the 
occasion might grace the stage. A brass band was hired to 
head the procession from the college to the place of exhibition- 
Marshalls were active in protecting the parade from violence 
sought to be stirred up by the provoked Seniors. Dr. Nevin 
himself, as honorary chief, and more than a whole platoon 
of police, was on the stage to keep in awe the "Hoi-polloi" and 
that fact saved us from open outbreak of disorder. Soon the 
great expectant audience all were in full sympathy with the 
speakers and rewarded the "barbarians" with rapturous ap- 
plause. It struck a success. My speech was said to be a happy 
hit, taking off men mnemonics and things by indirect allusions 
on The Crisis of the Present Age. Super's was especially good 
on The Insuperability of the Impervious. Billy Craig (now 
Rev. Dr. C), on Patent Education, took down the house. The 
whole affair stamped an impress of character on the class, and 
was set down as a credit mark to the college, while it did no 
damage to the Seniors. Our Class 1849, Jameson said, "when 
we left college, made a hole in the institution," which since the 
removal in 1853 has been gloriously filled. 

Among college students, some bright and wise, and some 
quite otherwise; some of whom are proud and rich, some 
humble and diffident; yet intimate relations by elective affinity 
will grow up between class-mates and friends. Many of these 
cemented friendships last through the years and become 
stronger and more sacred as time rolls you to the greater and 
ever increasing distance from the fresh beginning. Half a 
century is not long enough to wear out the binding power of 
these devoted relations. 

Dr. Joseph Coblentz, though not of our class, is mentioned 
first among my most consistent college friends. He was emi- 



THE SOCIETY HALLS. 



7* 



nently the best, sincerest and most tried. Fifty-six years, until 
lately when he died, thousands of miles away in the farthest 
northwestern county of these United States, near Vancouver, 
he stood firm and unchanging in intercourse of college, society 
and Christian fellowship. Not a classmate, but in the Diag- 
nothian Hall Committee, we had much in common sympathy 
and trials. We were co-workers together on the building 
committee in erecting the first society hall, costing over $6,ooc 
by subscription, at Mercersburg. Here consultation, care, 
fidelity and mutual labor bound us in one. Though not called 
brilliant, he was thoroughly solid and always safe. This 
characterized him in his large success in the practice of his 
profession, and as a Trustee of the college at Lancaster for 
twenty years, and as an elder in the Reformed Church at dif- 
ferent places where he lived and was called to bear that office. 
Success, pecuniarily, early and in middle life crowned his 
efforts. But in later years having moved away from old 
friends to the far West for the sake of his wandering son, he 
lost his very competent fortune and lingered among strange 
people in straitened circumstances, till in a full age at almost 
four-score he died in the faith of his Reformed fathers. In 
the latest years of his pilgrimage his warm and loving letters 
refreshed me often as earlier ones had many a time done be- 
fore. He was Maryland born. God be thanked for such an 
exceptional Christian friend. 

Hon. John H. Thomas, a classmate, is another of the tried 
friends who wear. Not as gushing as some, yet he would 
always "do to tie to", as the raftsmen say. Engrossed in a 
large and lucrative manufacturing business that has made 
him a millionaire, he's stood true to his early friends. Just 
now news of his death has come through the papers. 

Rev. Dr. Lewis H. Keafauver, late chancellor of Heidelberg 
University, is another well tried friend. Although having 
graduated later than our class, yet he entered the ministry 
before me because of my teaching years. Our labors for years 
were interwoven together in western Pennsylvania and Ohio, 



72 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and this kept up our common relations of intimacy in ec- 
clesiastical toil. At the General Synod meeting in Tiffin, by 
special invitation myself and wife were the guests of his 
family, and we had a royal entertainment while we reviewed 
our varied experience and mutual trials. Nothing seems to 
bind more closely than the fellowship of Christian consecra- 
tion and work for Christ's cause in the church. Dr. K. bore 
his age and honors well, and had the general confidence of the 
western brethren, who learned to know and love him. His 
late visit to our house several years ago was far too short. 
His recent death at near four score adds another sorrow. 

Judge Syester, my classmate, was tender, ardent, gushing, 
impulsive, generous and the most brilliant man of our class. 
A born orator, poetic, sympathetic, pathetic, aesthetic, a warm 
friend and cordial hater ; at one time threatening to pursue 
me to life's end with rancorous hostility, and then again melt- 
ing, became my hearty admirer and advocate to the close of 
his brilliant professional and official career. Valedictorian of 
our class, the third honor well bestowed, he told me in a stage 
whisper when about to be called out to deliver the Salutatory, 
after weeks of late estrangement, "if the speaking were not 
well done, he would kick me of! the stage." I often told him he 
should have been a preacher, as his mother intended ; but it 
was not until only a few years before his death that he pro- 
fessed personal faith in the Savior. The great majority of 
his college and professional associates put the subject of per- 
sonal religion for years for him quite out of the question. He 
made many friends and served them well with all his strong 
natural enthusiasm. He received many Maryland honors. 

It were utterly impossible to make individual mention and 
do justice to all our college friends. Many of them come up 
in memory as we sit alone and review the sweet belongings of 
those distant years. Some cannot be crowded out, and others 
have been well written up before the Church, as Bausman, 
Super, and others. 

The Rev. Dr. Thos. G. Apple was in the next class after 
ours. He came to the institution prepared to enter the Junior 



THE SOCIETY HALLS. 



73 



class, and at once took a high stand among the more active 
members of our Diagnothian society. We soon became fast 
friends. Our aims, our hopes, our joys were one. Towards 
the end of his course he was among others taken down with 
typhoid fever, and for long weeks we watched over him day 
and night, hoping and praying for a favorable turn from what 
seemed the near borders of death. Young James Good, brother 
of Prol J. H. and Rector Good, had just died from the fever. 
Also young Boyer, a son of one of our pioneer ministers, was 
among those who next fell victims to the disease. Dr. Nevin, 
our venerable President, was among the occasional nightly 
watchers who along with a few of us took charge of one or 
another of the sick (when the students went home at end of 
session) and ministered to them in their delirious sufferings. 
The great scholar and eminent child of God, our venerable 
President, became an humble servant especially of the destitute 
beneficiary student, Boyer, and was present to close his eyes 
here, to be opened in the better world above. 

After Dr. Apple's recovery, for whose care I was mainly 
detailed on alternate nights, we became still more closely knit 
and were united in holding many theological and historical 
opinions and general convictions in common, especially in the 
business of the society and later in the work of the synods. 
At the Tercentenary at Philadelphia, 1863, we were both set 
on kindred topics for addresses bearing on the Heidelberg 
Catechism. They are published in the Tercentenary Monu- 
ment. His busy and successful after years took up much of 
his time, and we were far apart and saw less of each other. 
As a sort of closing record of his cherished memory, here is 
appended a last warm letter referring touchingly to our form- 
er days, when we both were younger in the harness : 

Lancaster, March 15th, 1892. 

My Dear Dr. Russell : I looked on your letter for some time, as 
one often does, before opening it, wondering from whom it came. 
There was something familiar about the handwriting, as a sort of re- 
membrance of long, long ago, and yet I could not exactly fix it. But 
when I opened it, it called up the olden times when we were students 
together at old Marshall, and particularly when I was teaching at 



74 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Utica Mills, Md., — you will have forgotten all that, — teaching school, 
and you used to write me letters about the doings in the Diagnothian 
Society, and arranging for the Anniversary. How glad I used to be, 
in my loneliness down there in Maryland when I heard from Alma 
Mater and the society ! Yes, the handwriting is the same, and no sign 
of age in it. So I thank you for remembering and writing to me. 

I have not yet had time to attend to your request about the student. 
You used to be a great friend to students who were working their 
own way through college, and you seem to have the same feeling still. 
I will do what I can to get the place for him. 

How long ago, and yet, in one way, how short the time seems, since 
we used to go to our boarding-house, and to Society! I remember 
that when I was sick, so nigh unto death, I wanted Russell to lift me 
up, because he had broad shoulders, was strong and would not let 
me fall. Yes, the old days come back in fond recollection. And now 
we begin to be called old! I can hardly realize it. I feel as if I could 
go back there and be a boy again among the boys. 

Well, I am glad you wrote to me, and for such a characteristic pur- 
pose. The College and Seminary have outgrown their former propor- 
tions. Sixty theological students ! That is as large as the college used 
to be. With kind regards to Mrs. Russell, I remain, as in the olden 
time. Yours with warm regard. Thos. G. Apple. 

College days will never die. As the end came for breaking 
up the mode of life and separating from the close bound 
friends, there was something almost sad at the ending. But 
the commencement is not a settling down to perpetual still- 
ness. Farewells to classmates, recitations and the venerable 
professors, awaken one to the fact that the real future is to be 
met. Most graduates from the college have determined on a 
profession and start away from college early on a special 
course of preparation for what has been chosen. In my own 
mind, however, nothing as to this was as yet settled. Several 
months remained for me to complete my year's engagement 
in the store at Mercersburg, where I had on small salary made 
my last college year's expenses. The money previously bor- 
rowed had also to be looked after, hence I wanted to earn 
something more before incurring further outlay as yet for a 
profession. This was left without undue haste to the order- 
ing of Providence. 



VII. 



Teaching in the High School 

A N offer came to me about this time to take charge of the 
Parochial Classical High School of the Reformed 
Church at Middletown, Md. 

The appointment was accepted with some misgivings as to 
my fitness for the place. Some such employment was then 
desired, but this came to me as a surprise and unsought. Some 
of the professors had given me the following 

Testimonials : 

Mr. George B. Russell is a graduate of Marshall College, having 
passed regularly through the course of studies pursued in this institu- 
tion. He has sustained throughout the reputation of a good student 
in the several departments of the Course, as well as an excellent charac- 
ter in all other respects. He proposes now to devote himself for a 
time to the business of teaching. For this employment, it is believed, 
he will be found to be morally and intellectually well adapted'; and he 
is hereby recommended accordingly as worthy of all confidence, where- 
ever he may have an opportunity of any such service. 

John W. Nevin, 
President of Marshall College. 

Mercersburg, Apr. 9, 1850. 

George B. Russell, a regular graduate of Marshall College, has dur- 
ing his whole course of studies distinguished himself by his talents, 
industry and correct moral deportment. I consider him very well 
qualified to take charge of a classical school, and can recommend him 
as a young gentleman well worthy of the confidence of the community. 

Phil. Schaff, 
Ger. and Ch. History. 

Mercersburg, April 9, 1850. 

Mr. George B. Russell graduated at this institution, Sept. 12, 1849. 
In the department of Languages he maintained throughout his col- 
legiate course a very high standing. He was distinguished for his 
punctuality, for the deep interest which he took in the authors he was 
R-7 



7 6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



reading, and for his correct translations. As he stood high also in all 
the other departments of learning, on taking his first degree, the 
Faculty awarded him, among a class of excellent students, the second 
honor for scholarship. In his general deportment he was always cor- 
rect and gentlemanly. On account then of his high literary attainments 
and moral and religious worth, I feel a pleasure in recommending him 
as a gentleman in every way qualified for taking charge of a High 
School or Classical Academy. 

William M. Nevin, 
Prof, of Ancient Languages, in Marshall College. 
Mercersburg, April 9th, 1850. 

Marshall College, Mercersburg, Pa., April 9, 1850. 
This will testify that Mr. George B. Russell is a graduate of Mar- 
shall College of the Class of 1849. He was under my instruction in all 
the higher Mathematics, including the Conic Sections and the Calculus, 
in Mechanical Philosophy and Astronomy, and in Political Economy. 
In all these branches he was characterized as a student by attention 
and diligence, and his success was such as entirely to satisfy me. His 
moral character is entirely unimpeached. I consider him an excellent 
scholar and a young gentleman every way worthy of confidence ; and 
as he is now desirous of obtaining a situation as a teacher, I have no 
hesitation in commending him to all who may have any confidence in 
my judgment as well qualified to give instruction in all the branches 
usually taught in our best Classical Schools and Academies. I wish 
him success, and shall be glad if this testimonial, to which I consider 
him fully entitled, may in any degree contribute thereto. 

Thomas D. Baird, 
Professor of Mathematics and Mechanical Philosophy. 

From Mercersburg then was taken my sudden timid 
departure. That the election came altogether unsolicited 
was a consideration in its favor. Prof. G. W. Ruby, 
who had been in charge of that school, had resigned 
in order to teach in the Academy at York, Pa. He was 
one of the "pious Goetheans", and was greatly scandalized 
that the school at Middletown now should fall into the hands 
of a "wild Diagnothian". That is what they called all of us. 
The place was in some respects a desirable one, as in fact it 
was found to be, with good pupils, good patrons, good and 
prompt pay by subscriptions, and a community of intelligent 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 77 

Christian people. Had teaching been my settled profession, 
this might have been my home for a long while. As it was, 
the test of that undertaking itself came to me in great fear 
and trembling. The stage journey thither from Hagerstown 
was one of intense uneasiness, misgiving and anxiety — fear- 
ing untried possible troubles. The first morning of school 
early in April, 1850, a violent thunder storm hung for about 
an hour over the building, marking the beginning and por- 
tending as it seemed to me, a disturbance in the conditions. 
But comfort, quiet, peace, prosperity and pleasure soon fol- 
lowed, with success and popularity. In the short two sum- 
mers and one winter before my return to Mercersburg when 
elected to become Tutor in the college, six students were pre- 
pared to go with me to enter the Sophomore class and one for 
the Freshman. One also went to the Freshman class at Prince- 
ton, where he took the first honor in a class of fifty-three ; and 
one went to Gettysburg. Many friendships, some lasting over 
fifty years, were formed and left behind. From that school 
much good material has continued to come out to bless the 
Reformed church and the world. A type once set will leave its 
impress for many years. 

What ministered very largely to my success and pleasant 
relations with the school and people, was the hearty seconding 
of all my efforts by the pastor, Rev. Dr. C. F. McCauley, and 
his most excellent wife. In fact they took me kindly into their 
home and made it for me, a stranger, mine. The parson gave 
valuable hints as to cases of government, and also made pub- 
lic sentiment in favor of the school and its work. As it pros- 
pered he rejoiced with me and the patrons, and his genial en- 
couragement was often most refreshing. His favor opened 
to me the doors of the best families, and the social side was a 
new inspiration to my hitherto shut up and isolated being. 
Some of these kindly benefits then first afforded, still last in 
these long years, and my memories of that place will never 
grow dim. 



78 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



One incident then occurring is here given: It was my good 
fortune to rescue rny friend's second little son from drowning. 
Sitting in my room upstairs one day, a splash was heard in 
the rain tub below the window, and on looking out, there was 
our three-year-old Eddie hanging tilted head foremost over 
the side of the tub. His little arms were too short and too 
weak to enable him to recover his lost balance and lift his head 
above the water, which partly filled the vessel. The other two 
older children had run away terrified, and by the time taken 
to run down and draw him out, he had strangled to uncon- 
sciousness. Lifting him up and carrying him to the back 
porch, we rolled him gently back and forth on a spread-out 
blanket, the water meanwhile running from his mouth. Signs 
of returning life appeared, and he was restored to the arms 
of his distressed mother. Thereafter he regularly brought his 
little chair beside me daily at family worship, and often prayed 
for "Mistah Dussie and his fiddie bow". Years later, on be- 
ing invited to a supper, he had served up for us some of his 
young pigeons. It was almost like the water for David, 
brought at great cost from the old well at Bethlehem. By in- 
vitation, years afterwards, I preached his funeral sermon at 
Reading. 

Fifty years ago duelling in the South was yet held in honor 
among the chivalry. It very nearly came to me then to fall 
under the tyranny of that public opinion. A fancy fair was 
held, and after its close it came in for a general review notice 
and criticism, in some articles written for the Catoctin Whig. 
These shaved perhaps too close, and those who were promi- 
nently connected with the affair were deeply aroused, and the 
excitement created a strong feeling against the review. This 
led to public controversy with some of the citizens. Passion 
ran high in attempting to discredit the articles. The town 
took sides. 

A young gentleman of fiery blood and haughty southern 
mein met the teacher alone one evening on a narrow sidewalk 
of the town and claimed his full half of the rather scant pave- 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 



79 



ment, in the middle. In passing, the shoulders of both tapped 
none too lightly, so that the young man was jostled towards 
the outer curb. No words passed. No person saw the occur- 
rence, and if he had been wise the indignity had never been 
known. But seouling with a muttered curse, he hastened on 
his way to tell it to his friends. Consulting about the affront, 
they advised him to send a challenge to mortal combat under 
the code. It was generally expected that the northern teacher 
of the high school, a member of the church, would of course 
decline to fight, and the opposition party could then "crow 
over him", and that would set the public decrying the poltroon. 
If, however, the challenge should be accepted, the challenger 
would have the decided practical advantage, being familiar 
with any weapon that might be chosen by the challenged party. 
They had about settled on this, as likely either way to kill, or 
damage the offender against southern chivalry. 

When this course was determined upon, a plain farmer 
thereupon reminded them that it would not be all play only 
on one side ; for one day in the late harvest where the gang 
of cradlers were at work in Kefauver's wheatfield, they banter- 
ed the young teacher to take one of the five cradles for the 
next round. Supposing they would have the laugh on him in 
a bungling effort to keep up as number four in the line, he 
threw off his coat and examining the edge of the scythe, 
waited the leader's stroke. At the right time he struck into 
the standing grain with the gang. He did not as they expecte- 
ed early throw down the instrument and quit. The leader 
put in his blade the full length at every stroke, and kept on 
without halting to whet up at the usual place. They went the 
whole length of the field and then across and around again to 
the starting point. The fourth cradle for a wonder kept its 
place in the line and so the fifth man was not kept back; nor 
did those in front gain any advance. The teacher threw his 
left elbow close to the standing wheat, gaining some inches 
till the whole set were even front in line and the last stroke of 
the leader brought all to a simultaneous halt and finish. Then 



8o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the whole field, white and black, instead of anticipated de- 
rision, set up a hearty cheer for the pluck and bottom of the 
school teacher who had held his own in the trial of that hot 
afternoon. He had shown his mettle. 

Another quiet man at that discussion in favor of the pro- 
posed duel, said : "Doctah, I would not risk to bluff that young 
man. If you challenge him, he will cert'nly accept and fight 
you. I know su'thin' of him and the stock he comes from. He 
is not no'the'n, but su'the'n bo'hn; and has good Ma'hland 
blood in him. His eye and nerve will do. As like as not he 
is a steady shot and will kill you dead, shuah 's you meet." 
This story of the consultation, Rev. Dr. McCauley was de- 
lighted to tell. The call to mortal combat was therefore not 
made. The tide of public opinion turned more strongly in the 
teacher's favor. The humiliating worry and consequent trouble 
of declining on religious principle such an "affair of honor" 
was thus avoided. 

Tutor in College and Student in Seminary. 

Until about this time, the question of determining on a life 
.profession had not yet been settled. Preparation towards a 
decision came forward now. The Tutorship in Marshall Col- 
lege was unexpectedly offered me late in the summer of 1851. 
That seemed to indicate providentially that I could at least 
while tutoring also enter the Theological Seminary and carry 
along its studies without special cost or loss of time, if the 
strain of double duty could be endured. Meanwhile being tutor 
in the college and student in the theological studies, did not 
even then clinch me for the ministry. This providential call, 
however, while not committing me definitely once for all to my 
life work, gave more time for prayerful reflection. Under these 
considerations the principalship of the high school was resign- 
ed and the tutorship at a less salary was accepted. 

When the teaching work in the college was begun, accord- 
ingly, the regular course in theological study was taken up also 
in the seminary. This was in that troublous transition period 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 8l 

between the old and the new in the Reformed church. The 
"Romanizing tendency," as it was improperly called for want 
of a better name, was at work. At about the same time came 
also the agitation of the question as to the removal of the col- 
lege to Lancaster. In these later years of peace into which we 
have come, blessedly, it is not possible to fully estimate the 
sore troubles then afflicting the ministry and people of our de- 
nomination. It was a historical crisis, the beginning of a forty 
years' passage through "the great and terrible howling wilder- 
ness" of controversial trials. It was perhaps not the best time 
either for settling personal questions of duty. The "pious Ger- 
mans," half a dozen, with whom the Seminary was then af- 
flicted, rebelled against Dr. Schaff that winter and under pres- 
sure of the general outside persecution, the Board of Visitors 
of the seminary was called together. The meeting well nigh 
tore the institution to atoms. That was the first loosening up 
that finally lost our German professor to the Reformed church. 
By special grace and good management, the threatened disrup- 
tion was for the time escaped. The cloud of impending dis- 
aster however still hung thick with rumors and charges of 
"Romanizing tendency." Dr. Nevin, weary of the gnawing 
trouble, withdrew from the official teaching force for which he 
had not been receiving pay. Our class had as yet but little 
benefit from his lectures. Then soon after the removal of the 
college to Lancaster, Dr. Schaff became lonely and took a trip 
to Germany. The seminary was therefore indefinitely hung up 
in ordinary, without a single teacher. Most of the students 
were persuaded to take their dismission without having finish- 
ed their course of studies, and applied for admission into the 
ministry. It was my lasting misfortune to be left theologically 
very much unfinished, for my course was not half way 
through. The seminary being indefinitely suspended, there was 
no telling when, if ever, it would resume its sessions. Until 
this final breaking up, I had not thought of following the col- 
lege to Lancaster. My tutorship in that institution had been 
given up in the previous spring in order to stay temporarily as 



82 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



student with the seminary. Black Sam, however, came up to 
the room and blandly said : " 'Fessor, has you got any old closes 
fur dis hyar nigger, when you goes away?" The going was 
now a settled conclusion. 

Town boys and students previous to the time of the removal 
were liable to breed differences and quarrels, stirring them at 
times into hot contests. Such an unwelcome occasion occurred 
near the end. It had started some time before with the arrest 
by civil officers of some students charged with disorderly con- 
duct at night on the streets. Annoyed citizens had complained 
to the authorities. Prof. Baird convinced 'Squire Metcalf that 
there was not sufficient ground for the charge of "riot", and 
the case was dismissed. But the town rabble afterwards came 
up in force one night and attacked in terrific bombardment the 
college building. The assailants were in large numbers. 

As the only college officer within call, the students came and 
requested me to command them as a repelling force. We then 
quickly and as quietly as possible divided into three squads, 
Keafauver at the head of one on the left, Boyle in charge of 
another on the right, and my solid Dutch aid holding the cen- 
ter. Two of the divisions then sallied out one from either end 
door north and south on the ground floor of the building, and 
the smaller central reserve band appeared simultaneously on 
the high front portico. Then came the order from the tutor, 
"Charge, students charge, with the college yell !" They obey- 
ed. Taken thus unexpectedly on both flanks and in uncertain 
numbers in front, the assailants first wavered, then turned and 
fled with the college braves in hot pursuit. Pell-mell and in ut- 
ter dismay, they broke into a full run down street towards 
Center Square. "We routed them, we scouted them, nor lost 
a single man." Thus ended the war. 

■ During my connection with the faculty of the college my 
duties brought me in close contact with the other professors 
and the college community. The larger part of these relations 
were of the most pleasant kind. At Dr. SchafFs house es- 
pecially there was a welcome home. In an attack of typhoid 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 



83 



fever from which I had suffered, the Doctor himself personally 
and his excellent family had ministered to my comfort. And 
then when Dr. SohafFs little son, Willie, was so long a sufferer 
from the effects of a piece of chestnut shell lodged for six 
weeks in his throat, which ended after two surgical operations 
in his death, I 'had been often in attendance at his side. This 
for me was some return of service in my power for what they 
had given. After their sore visitation, the whole family be- 
came still more kind, the sacred memory of which shall be car- 
ried to the end of my days. 

Dr. Schaff, the great versatile scholar, was wonderful in 
his genial simplicity and social qualities as a friend and com- 
panion. He would speak freely of his literary plans, aims, and 
work ; lamenting then also his yet defective English, his unfit- 
ness to meet Yankee humbug, and to correct and heal the evil 
of American radical religious thought and diverse denomin- 
ational systems. He was willing to learn from what he called 
my practical tact and early hard experience. Thus when told 
respectfully that his prayer to have "our souls whitewashed" 
had a bad idiomatic smack — because to be whitewashed, as the 
phrase was used by politicians, was to clear a man charged 
with crookedness, even if guilty, for mere party sake, and was 
therefore not what he prayed for — he thereafter prayed for 
the soul to be "washed white." He spoke of a Lutheran theo- 
logical opponent as "an emense fox," and of another antago- 
nist as "a right smart fellow." It was my privilege to be one 
of the two witnesses to swear to his naturalization papers. It 
was my first oath in a court. Walking with the other witness 
Dr. Schneck and myself from the court house in Chambers- 
burg, across the public square, the newly made American citi- 
zen in high spirits and great glee said : "Now, Dr. S., I am a 
full-fledged American citizen; I have renounced my allegience 
to all European kings, princes, powers and pbttentots" 

In the class room English and German often tumbled in 
mixed, so much as to raise a laugh, not of mocking derision, 
but of general pleasantness. "Mr. Higbee, what you na about 



8 4 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Klein Asian (Asia Minor) ?" After a hearty laugh, himself 
joining as heartily: "Herr Keafaver, how many hours round 
is Mt. Hor?" One day the class heard the old Latin saw: 
"Novem Testamentum in Vetere latat — Vetus in Novo revel- 
at," thus explained : The New Testament lies hidden in the Old. 
And the* Old Testament is revealed in the New. The Old 
Testament is like the dark midnight, the New Testament is 
like the morning dawn : the Old Testament is as starlight, the 
New Testament is the day light; the New Testament is bright 
sunlight, and the Old Testament is all moonshine!" After the 
laugh he admonished the class: "Young gentlemen, we must 
not lose our dignity." 

Many of the anecdotes told of him are perhaps not more 
than half true. That, for instance, about the .fat pigs and the 
little pen ; on account of which he traded two large hogs to 
the colored janitor, for smaller ones so as to fit the pen better. 
He explained that it was simply an act of kindness to the poor 
colored man, not because he did not know the difference in 
value; but especially as he did not care to eat much pork in 
his family. After his removal to New York he repeatedly 
overtured me to come to his relief in some joint work, helping 
to bear some of his increasing burdens in translating and pub- 
lishing, which he felt sure were shortening his days. A four 
thousand dollar secretaryship, which he could control, he 
offered to secure for me, as a salary consideration — which 
was something for me then to refuse. But this was declined 
while deciding to remain in the scantier pay of the missionary 
work of the Reformed Church. 

He always stood valiantly 'by his friends, who had stood 
firmly by him in our church, when he needed support at the 
time he was assailed and for years most fiercely persecuted 
from without by the American religious element then so hos- 
tile to his theological and historical system. The very parti- 
sans that later came to glorify him when they found him of 
use to their party, would have crushed him at the first if the 
Reformed Church at the cost of great persecution and oppo- 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL, 



85 



sition from Puritanic unchurchliness and all the unhistorical 
sects, had not then defended him before the hostile world of 
Yankeedom. The reproach they laid upon him fell also on the 
Reformed Church. In view of this, I took the liberty after- 
wards to show him squarely, that it was a pity he had left our 
church, for immediate comfort and the gain of present popu- 
larity; when immortal fame and historical rewards were with- 
in such near reach — if only he had remained and suffered with 
us a little while longer, till our church won, as it later did, 
full recognition for himself and our system of thought. Oth- 
ers of our ministers too might have exchanged place and ser- 
vice by passing over, as some indeed did, and others still fol- 
low, for gain, ease and popularity. But the rank and file re- 
mained loyal in those d.ays, and bore the brunt of battle. Dr. 
Nevin himself once in Pittsburg expressed in my hearing his 
regret at that defection from our host just at the turning 
point, when success was bringing us peace in quieter days. 
In later years, Dr. Schaff also seemed to feel still consciously 
his first tender love — something of what there was of a debt 
of gratitude for his early defence, by the old church wherein 
was his first calling, and in which as the apostle says, every 
one should so abide. 

Dr. Schaff, as you know, prepared a child's catechism. It 
was in the years when a number of other such little books 
were made, as by Dr. Bomberger, Dr. Harbaugh and Dr. 
Strasberger; and as no one of them seemed to be just the 
right thing, he tried to improve on them all. Testing the right 
working of his questions and answers, he used the catechism 
in his family for his own children. Once a waggish Reformed 
elder, a doctor who was raised in the Presbyterian Church, 
came to pay a professional call just when Dr. Schaff was 
asking his little boy : "Did Christ die for all men ?" And the 
child answered "Yes." "Tut-tut," said the elder, "all wrong." 
Being asked by Dr. Schaff how the answer should be given, 
he said, "Let the boy say No. Then ask him for whom did 
He die? Answer: For the German Reformed and a few 



86 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Presbyterians. What Presbyterians? Answer: For the elect. 
Who are the elect? Answer: Nobody knows." 

That was before the days when Dr. Schaff swallowed the 
Westminster Confession whole in joining the Presbyterians; 
whence the said elder had come into the Reformed Church. 
It was also long before the revision movement of their con- 
fession came to a head in the General Assembly. But there is 
no question that Dr. SchafFs teaching in his lectures and 
books in the Presbyterian seminary, and his influence upon 
their students and even the older ministers had much to do 
with their broader study of historical Reformed theology; 
which has now come to hold its place of honor and power, in 
that denomination which is seeking for a more catholic ex- 
pression in its newly adjusted confession and Book of Wor- 
ship. Their General Assembly called on the Presbyteries for 
approving action on a declaration of new development of old 
doctrine. History study is smoothing off the rough corners 
and making easier the coming into one of all the manifold 
expressions of Protestant truth. Hide bound Presbyterianism 
will yet come to the consciousness that it is itself also in the 
historic Reformed family ; and historic Reformed is generic, 
central — that its form of church government after which they 
are called by no means makes up the whole contents of its 
distinctiveness and confession of faith. In creed and cultus, 
it yet will find something more than the nominal accidentals 
of its existence. Its lately prepared Book of Worship is a 
wonderful advance for that church. Years ago it seemed dead 
to any such possibilities; and then it violently persecuted as 
dangerous what it now is ready to receive from our family, 
and embrace us in fraternal kinship as Pan-Presbyterians. Its 
adoption of the Heidelberg Catechism in 187 1 for policy's 
sake, can now be based on broad common faith in its ecumeni- 
cal teaching of the blessed gospel. And it is growing Litur- 
gical in getting back to the old life of Church History 

They are now zealous for union — a negative blinking of 
doctrine with nothing to stand on. 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 



87 



In the large assembly of the Evangelical Alliance at Pitts- 
burg, amid hundreds of distinguished men, any one of whom 
was proud to receive a public recognition from Dr. Schaff, 
he, while presiding over it, caught sight of me in a distant 
corner. His eye lighted up and he sent a folded slip of paper 
over the heads of many in the vast audience away back to his 
former student. When others along its line reached for the 
missive his significant gesture made them understand it must 
go on further; and when it reached its intended destination, 
he gave me the old talismanic sign of recognition only known 
to himself and me alone. All eyes were directed after the 
paper containing only a scribbled word, and many asked who 
was thus marked out by the great scholar on the platform 
before the great assembly ; as others had asked, Is that 
Schaff? 

His excellent wife has always expressed congenial, kindly 
feelings for the old Mercersburg students; and wherever she 
met them after a half century they were persons of reciprocal 
friendly recognition. It is something to be lastingly thankful 
for, to have been one of the doctor's students; and a blessed 
memory to call up the close personal relations with him in 
his family where friendship and Christian regards cheered 
those early days of our trials and those of the greatest church 
historian and encyclopedic scholar. 



VIII. 



Dr. Nevin 



S to Dr. Nevin, easily the profoundest theologian, phil- 



osopher and general scholar of the age, our student life 
and personal relations were of an entirely different kind. You 
dared not run too close up to him in undue familiarity on any- 
thing like assumed equality. He was however not at all 
haughty or repelling or overbearing. Rather, he was clothed 
with genial, kindly dignity, with a friendly look always of re- 
spectful welcome, with a most unquestioned heartiness ; and 
almost heavenly was his benediction of a greeting smile. 
Smile he could really, extending the expression broadly, to- 
wards each ear ; and laugh too, could he, but that was seldom. 
He abhorred whistling students. If they must whistle, learn 
of Davy Johnson. However much you might enjoy his won- 
derful lectures, or even his general conversation in the small- 
est company, yet you were put upon a ground that always 
seemed to have a sacred limit when alone with him. But even 
then, he would perhaps start off as he often did and freshly 
dilate upon some vital subject that made it highly profitable 
to be the sole auditor. He held the steel and flint, striking 
for you streams of kindling sparks. His impress of spirit was 
a blessing, whenever meeting him on review, business or col- 
lege affairs ; or asking for new light on the trend of the great 
controversies then so absorbing. His comprehensive grasp of 
the reigning issues was gigantic. He could give a trans- 
lation that was better than the original. The few personal 
anecdotes of which mention might be made, seem out of har- 
mony with the sacred memories of that unequalled awful man. 
How he could in fewest words rebuke presumption, take the 
starch out of vanity and pride by a mere gesture or simple 
word; or encourage timid students! His favorable criticism 
of a college oration in the Prayer Hall made my feet stand 




DR. NEVIN. 89 

more firm in my class and college work for the years fol- 
lowing. 

A written certificate from him as to my fitness to teach af- 
ter leaving college is worth more today than a college diploma, 
with his signature as President and that of all the other pro- 
fessors attached. Very kindly and generously, too, he pub- 
licly reviewed my book, "Creed and Customs of the Reformed 
Church," and sent me also a personal letter. Such things 
helped me to cure my oversensitive timidity, due perhaps, as 
before stated, to the harsh repressions in early treatment as a 
poor boy among unkind people. His lectures should be edited 
and published, as good seed for the new century's harvest. 

Appended is his notice, 1869, of 

Creed and Customs : or Doctrines and Practices of the Reformed 
Church. "Many have felt the want of a volume setting forth in a gen- 
eral way the doctrines and practices of our German branch of the Reform- 
ed Church in this country; and it is well that an attempt has been now 
made to meet this want in Mr. Russell's hand-book entitled Creed and 
Customs. It is not necessary to pronounce any wholesale judgment on 
its merits; the subject is altogether too broad for that; and the writer 
besides has aimed at maintaining in the treatment of it, a certain free- 
dom of view, corresponding with what he holds to be very properly, 
the historical confessional liberty of our Church. We have aimed 
simply, he says, at presenting what we regard as a fair statement of 
the doctrines and practices of our Reformed Church as a whole — not 
the narrow conceptions of mere individual or selfish party interests. 
It will therefore not likely give entire satisfaction to the prejudices of 
either extreme in the issues now before the Church. This is some- 
thing to be borne in mind, of course, in the use of the book. With 
all this, however, it fills an important place in our Church literature; 
and we may hope it will be of wide service among us, in helping our 
people to some right apprehension of the great questions which are 
involved in their proper denominational life. There is much need of 
this among us on all sides. Not for the encouragement of sectarian 
bigotry or prejudice by any means; the whole genius of our Church 
stands opposed to that, and we ought to "hate it with a perfect 
hatred" ; but with a view rather to ultimate harmony and concord with 
the other churches, on the only platform where such blessed conclusion 
can ever be reached — the old "Symbolum Apostolicum in its original 
and only true sense." 

(Signed) J. W. Nevin. 



go 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Rev. Dr. Berg, professor of the Theological Seminary in 
New Brunswick, in a notice of it in the "Christian Intelli- 
gencer," speaks of it as follows : 

"In many respects this volume may be regarded as one of the most 
important which has yet been issued by the Publication Board of the 
Reformed Church. Its general scope is excellent. The plan is admir- 
able. The information which it affords to members of the Church is 
just that which is so much needed, in order to make those who belong 
to the Reformed household intelligent in matters pertaining to their 
own Confession. The hints on catechising, and the remarks on the 
importance of it, are well timed. Much that is said in regard to the 
sacraments we endorse ; but the writer has views in relation to baptism 
differing from our apprehension of the Reformed doctrine." 

Here is also a letter from Dr. N. showing his earnest and 
entire honesty. It was intended while I was Book Editor in 
the publication office to have published a book of Homilies 
on the Church Year. He was asked to contribute one on 
Advent. The book was, however, never published. This is 
his reply to my request: 

Rev. and Dear Sir: In conformity with your request of the 4th 
inst., I will try to furnish a Serman on Advent for your proposed 
volume. 

It is utterly out of my power to reproduce my sermon at Dr. Har- 
baugh's funeral. It was got up on short notice in the midst of much 
confusion, and without satisfactory order; so that it fell very soon 
out of my mind, making it impossible for me to recover it even in 
general outline. What I might write now could not with any honesty 
at all be passed off as the same discourse. Some of the same thoughts 
appear in the first part of my sermon on Mr. Buchanan's death, pub- 
lished lately in the Messenger; and I could not use them now again 
without going too much over the same ground. 

Yours with sincere regard, 

J. W. N. 

Dr. Nevin was a correct and systematic business man; and 
whatever was put in his hand, was sure of receiving the best 
attention. When editing the Review, if asked how much copy 
he could furnish, his reply always was, "As much as you 
need." For nine years I served with him on the General 



DR. NEVIN. 



91 



Synod's Board of Directors of Orphan Homes, he being Pres- 
ident, while I was the acting Secretary. All the business of that 
Board, of which there was then some real work to be done, 
passed through our hands. Perhaps the greatest speech of his 
life was at the General Synod at Dayton in 1866. I heard 
him tell of a dream he had while there one night. He lay on 
his bed and felt all the agonies of the crucifixion like unto that 
of our Lord. It made a deep impression on him. When he 
awoke he was lying on his back, his arms outstretched as if 
on the cross, his feet entangled in the bed covers, and his 
heart in a flutter. His dream of death by crucifixion was most 
realistic and put him in stronger sympathy with the suffer- 
ings of Christ. 

While in hot controversy with the Roman Catholic Brown- 
son's Review, and also equally scoring unmercifully Puritan- 
ism, Princeton Presbyterianism and Dr. Berg, it was feared 
by some enemies and friends from the strong statements 
of the historical arguments, that he would finally land in the 
papal system. When two of the Alumni, Rev. Jos. Clark and 
myself, sent as a committee to request a statement of his po- 
sition, pointedly asked him as to what we could say of his 
Protestantism, he frankly replied: "I am not ashamed to be 
set down as an inquirer after truth." I went away from that 
interview with a somewhat distressed and foreboding heart. 
Some of his students had already outrun him, and submitted 
to Romanism. What if, after all, he should swing over to 
that side! Without testing my own search so extremely in 
that direction, it seemed an awful foreboding to think of him 
by possibility as a convert to the Roman system. The Pope 
had already told Dr. Schaff in a personal interview, that he 
hoped the Doctor would yet become a son of the Roman 
church. Roman bishops and priests were during those years 
hopefully interested subscribers to the Review. If the foun- 
dations should be removed, what was to become of us? It 
was therefore with devout gratitude to our faithful Saviour 
Jesus Christ, that I heard our venerated leader say to me per- 
R-8 



92 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



sonally not long after the above interview, that he was now 
fully satisfied to stand on our true Reformed ground as Pro- 
testant, but at the same time "Catholic and Christian." 

A number of the young men, however, still claimed to be 
profound enough to be much disturbed with inward doubt on 
the great church question. That fad of assumed higher schol- 
arship is now happily seldom met in that form ; especially 
since several small squads made their submission to the papal 
claims ; that is, to what Dr. Nevin's most profound study and 
investigation did not lead him to own as conclusive in the 
earnest and willing pursuit of truth. "Faith, Reverence and 
Freedom," was his subject for our class Baccalaureate. His 
trying conflict, since it is over, gives us all the more full as- 
surance of our "only comfort in life and death." Jesus, the 
Christ of God ! What would we be, if it had not been for Dr. 
Nevin's teaching and personal influence? What would the 
Reformed Church here have become without the Lord's guid- 
ance by such great teachers as He has given us ? What would 
American Protestantism itself be today, without the Christ- 
ological system of Drs. Nevin and Schaff? The study of 
Church History has now become a popular necessity for all 
ministers even in other churches. 

There was some wonderful aptitude in our old Nestor, Rev. 
Dr. J. W. Nevin, for taking hold of the right things. When 
he came into our church in the "early forties," there was much 
to be done in order to bring the Reformed people to a self- 
conscious life unity. The historical necessity for a separate 
existence among the Protestant tribes of Israel in this country 
was not plain to many. At that time it would have been com- 
paratively easy for this Reformed branch to have been swal- 
lowed up in something like Dr. Roberts' plan of a big absorp- 
tion. But things are different now ; and the old bluestocking 
banner has become so faded out in almost colorless tinges as 
appearing in the church sky, that its negative revision and 
changed standards show little attractive distinction except for 
belonging to the multiplying millions called Presbyterians. 



DR. NEVIN. 



93 



Negative unionism finds it easy to handle little fish. Our his- 
torical peculiarities soon called out Dr. N.'s appreciation of 
their value. First, was our excellent doctrinal teaching in the 
Heidelberg Catechism. It was therefore by him honored, ad- 
vocated and made more of than ever before. Its history and 
genius came to the front in his little books, and the whole Re- 
formed Church wondered while others admired. The Anxious 
Bench was displaced. Catechization and confirmation showed 
some of our conservative peculiarities. Educational religious 
training made strong Christians. The Sacraments, Baptismal 
grace, "Tauf gnade," and the Holy Supper in the Mystical 
Presence became real. The active part of the people in public 
worship was restored. 

Next our institutions of learning became distinctive schools 
of Christological faith and philosophy. Persecution of course 
followed, but the bearers of the Cross stood with more firmly 
placed feet on the Rock, until a peace was conquered, and vic- 
tory came to the little host. It was a long and tiresome trial, 
but worth it all, for our fidelity to historical peculiarities. 

But here comes a church paper's well paid editorial leader 
full of pride and satisfaction, solemnly telling us to "oblit- 
erate all our denominational peculiarities," in favor of an 
empty bag like union with a numerous host, into which the 
Reformed body is to be absorbed and engulfed without con- 
ditions. No : not by the call of the Lord is this tribe yet to be 
obliterated. Our union is on the old "Symbolum apostoli- 
cum," always historical — one in Christ. 



IX. 



A Vocation 

' I s HE indefinite suspension of the teaching exercises, in 
the Theological Seminary at Mercersburg in the sum- 
mer of 1853 after the college had gone to Lancaster, 
when Dr. Schaff had grown lonesome and discour- 
aged, being then the only professor left, made an 
unsettled condition for those students who had re- 
mained there to close up as best they could their theo- 
logical course. As a personal relief, Dr. Schaff took a trip of 
indefinite length to Europe, and all in the seminary was at 
sea. My course was not yet half way through, and the tutor- 
ship was now in other hands. All seemed disarranged. My 
call to the ministry, for which even the preparation in studies 
was not half completed, was not yet settled or clear. For some 
years, the matter of life's work had been made the subject of 
earnest and prayerful thought. But no decided turn had as 
yet been found in a definite conclusion. While we are to a 
certain extent creatures of circumstances, yet we are not mere 
puppets, for Providence turns the clay into its intended form. 

In this waiting posture, my next call to active service was 
to become Sub Rector of the preparatory department of the 
newly united Franklin and Marshall College at Lancaster. 
In the fall of 1853, without self design or scheme, came my 
appointment to that place. Here was again plain sailing for 
the time as teacher of young men ; and it promised in the stu- 
dent body good success. But in October of that year, the 
general voice of the brethren induced me to attend the meet- 
ing of the Eastern Synod just at that time holding its annual 
sessions in Philadelphia. It was the celebrated ecclesiastical 
court at which Rev. Dr. S. R. Fisher, of the Messenger, was 
tried on the charge of lending himself and the church paper to 
the work of fostering and abetting the controversy on Roman- 



A VOCATION. 



95 



izing Tendency, which was then seriously disturbing the peace 
of the church. Rev. Dr. Elias Heiner, Baltimore, and Rev. Dr. 
Daniel Zacharias, Frederick, were the prosecutors in that bit- 
ter trial. They had been warm friends personally of the ac- 
cused. But parties formed on opposing sides, feelings grew 
strong, and sundered tried bonds. Dr. Zacharias was known 
as moderate and always for peace, yet he was active in sifting 
this case. It may be that they thought at the beginning, as in 
the outbreaking of waters, a small effort might stay the over 
rushing of the coming flood. Their charge before the Synod 
was not sustained. The conclusion of the trial was only the 
beginning of a long war. 

Rev. Dr. Elias Heiner, of Baltimore, the principal one of 
Dr. Fisher's accusers, felt himself strong enough to sway the 
Synod to his notions. For a long time he had held his position 
at the head of all our Reformed interests in the east. Fie was 
a man of fine personal address and good business qualities in 
his pastoral charge, and in the Maryland Classis and in the 
old Eastern Synod. He was ambitious to lead in all good 
movements. He was proudly genteel and masterful ; affable, 
pleasant and popular ; a strong friend, a stout antagonist, and 
withal ready to forgive, or make amends. On the Liturgical 
Committee, he had held a prominent place and took an active 
part. He wrote me after we had introduced in Grace church 
the book just then prepared and published, that he had thought 
he could easily have introduced the provisional use into his large 
congregation in Baltimore. But he was soon otherwise con- 
vinced; though he expressed satisfaction nevertheless that our 
efforts in the new Grace church, Pittsburgh, 1857, had met with 
so much favor. He was afterwards carried into the widest op- 
position, years before his death. 

Once he had received a wrong impression in regard to some 
critical adverse remarks by report heard as to himself, which 
he had inferred were made by me. For some years then he 
treated me, as he intended, coldly. But he found out after- 
wards that he was mistaken as to the man, who had thus 



9 6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



spoken of him; and then in a very kind and frank letter he 
openly explained and apologized for this treatment. There- 
after he was my friend again, though his letter was the first 
intimation to me of his previously hurt feelings. 

He and Dr. B. C. Wolff had once tried to secure my services 
while yet a college student, to solicit during a vacation sub- 
scriptions in the eastern part of the church, in behalf of the 
temporary wants of the Seminary. After the conditions were 
settled and the agent had started for the field, they wrote that 
the percentage of the commission ought to be less than they 
had proposed; and so they now fixed a smaller rate. This 
unkind after-clap nettled me, and at once the project was 
thrown back on their hands. When they then sought to re- 
new it on the former terms, it was of course refused. They 
felt agrieved, and the agent felt relieved. Dr. W. had not for- 
gotten it all, at the time of the German rebellion in the Semin- 
ary, when the Board of Visitors were called to look into the 
trouble with the Germans. His snubbing remarks directed 
personally towards us, while on the invitation of the Board 
we were giving some facts in the case rather favorable to Dr. 
SchafFs course, showed that he still held in memory what had 
passed between us years before. In reply to his curt, insulting 
reference to young men not well able to spit over their first 
goatee, he was reminded that the Board had sent for us to 
give them information, and if this were not acceptable, it 
would be easy to retire. He never gave me much personal 
encouragement in my work thereafter. 

Rev. Dr. Daniel Zacharias, the other accuser of Dr. Fisher, 
was a different sort of man. He was generally mild, easy go- 
ing and avoided contests. Though standing firmly with Dr. 
Fisher at the time of that trial between them as to the Mes- 
senger, yet he afterwards received me into his warm personal 
favor. He always met me most cordially at the Synods. He 
approved almost all my positions and arguments in the church 
courts on questions of polity. He repeatedly invited me to visit 
him in his home, and to preach for his people. He took well my 



A VOCATION. 



97 



conservative opinions as one who could be trusted in church 
matters and in the exciting national troubles of the Civil War. 
His delicate relations as pastor to the two opposing political 
wartime elements in the Frederick charge was highly appre- 
ciated — for which he felt kindly. 

But he was not a man to assume untried and risky respon- 
sibilities. For instance, at different times his Classis had ap- 
pointed him to look after our church interests in Cumberland. 
Fie never had the courage to undertake any new thing there. 
The same may be said also of Washington D. C. He was in 
position in many ways to have furthered the church there long 
years before the mission was organized. The Classis and Syn- 
od gave him charge to investigate, explore and arrange for 
the interest, where some of his people had gone to reside. The 
time, in his timid opinion was never quite ripe, nor the con- 
ditions favorable enough to make a beginning, while the case 
grew worse and less hopeful. So it was as to his project for 
an orphan home in his own pastoral charge. There were $2000 
available, he said, and other money in sight, to warrant such a 
work of faith and charity, but he feared to assume the risk 
and make the trial until too late. 

In acts and plans if one was more venturesome than he, the 
fact seemed to draw him towards such a person. In my posi- 
tive f editorial activities, yet always conservative, especially, he 
gave me cordial approbation, expressed in pleasant and flat- 
tering letters. His own large and rich charge seemed to suit 
him as well as he to fit it ; and he knew how to handle the deli- 
cate questions among his people. Fruits of his work are even 
yet coming to maturity in the good products of that charge, 
under his successor in the pastorate at Frederick. Those who 
were ante-Mercersburg students and ministers, were not all 
anti-Mercersburg men, nor were they exceptionally low 
church. Their standard of Reformed life was different decid- 
edly from the young men of the latest training in our schools, 
but that and this were both better, if harmoniously reconciled. 
Such a man was Dr. Zacharias, to stand for the good. 



98 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



To Dr. Zaeharias, while in the Board of Visitors of the Sem- 
inary, an application was made by a tramp professor for a 
chair in the theological faculty. "What department would Hen- 
Doctor desire to fill ?" " Ya, Latinish, Greecish, Deutsch, Eng- 
lish, Hebraish, Arabish, Sancritish, oder einige von alle die 
ferfluchte dingen !" He was master of Universal Science. So 
he tells also of a delegate from the west attending one of the 
triennial conventions held between the Dutch Reformed and 
German Reformed Synods. The westerner was appointed to 
preach before that body on missions. His text was, "Die ge- 
rechte fallen sieben mahl and stehen wieder auf." His elabo- 
ration of the theme was found to result in the application. "So 
ist es mit unsern Missionen Geschichte." The righteous fall 
seven times and rise up again — that is the way of our mis- 
sionary affairs. 

TOWARDS THE MINISTRY. 

Well, as before said, word came to me at Lancaster from the 
Synod at Philadelphia that a number of the brethren wished 
me to come down. Some of my former theological classmates 
were in attendance, and though perhaps but little more baked 
than the rest had already applied for license to preach; and 
when I reached the Synod, they had successfully passed ex- 
amination. Hence, soon after my appearance in the Synod, 
without request or even formal consent, my name was imme- 
diately announced by a member as a candidate for examina- 
tion! This application thus made put me in awkward plight; 
it was referred, nolens volens, to the Synod's committee. To 
bring me to a passive submission, it was argued and urged 
privately that the theological seminary would not likely soon 
be reopened ; and that even if my case were favorably reported 
by the committee and passed upon by the Synod, that would 
not bind me, the last of the old set of students, to take up the 
active work of the ministry just yet, before becoming more 
thoroughly prepared. 

The committee of examination had already reported on the 
other candidates; and therefore it was necessary to hold an- 



A VOCATION. 



99 



other extra meeting to act on the single new candidate. Dr. 
Samuel Helifenstein, Sr., Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger and 
Rev. William A. Good were the most active inquisitors. 
They sifted the case thoroughly on the reported Rom- 
anizing tendency as supposed to have 'been the ruling 
trend fostered in the late teaching at the Seminary. 
After several sessions, they reported favorably as to 
the candidate; and the certificate of licensure was unani- 
mously ordered by the Synod under its seal to be given. This 
brought with it, an entirely new view of the outward call to 
preach, and along with it an overwhelming inward feeling of 
sacred responsibility. It was to me now a call from the church 
and the voice of the Lord formally to preach the gospel/' 

Returning from the Synod to Lancaster, even my teaching 
of the young men in the classics seemed to have a new mean- 
ing. A Bible Class in the First Reformed Sunday-school had 
given me a sort of small pulpit also; and some of the fruits 
thereof were found years afterwards in the far West where 
some of the scholars met their former teacher and reminded 
him of what they had received. About that time, Rev. Dr. H. 
Harbaugh was sent to Pittsburg, Pa., under an order of the 
Board of Missions, to explore the field for Reformed material. 
He found there descendants of six ministers of our 
church, and others of our people who should have the means 
of grace ministered to them after our Reformed order. His 
report was made to the Board early in January, 1854, present- 
ing these and other interesting facts. The action of the Board 
on his paper, was in favor of promptly establishing a mission 
of the Reformed church in Pittsburg. Next thing was to find 
a man available for the place. Our missionary work had not 
at that time been reduced to much of a systematic plan. The 
whole weak effort was on a small scale. The mission treasury 
received, as the treasurer reported in my hearing, some years, 
about nine hundred dollars annually from the whole church. 
The upshot of the new venture was finally, that a call and com- 
mission for this work was tendered me, and Dr. Harbaugh 



IOO 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



was appointed to hand me the overture, at the same time per- 
sonally urging the appointee prayerfully to consider it, and 
make favorable answer at an early day. 

To me this was like a thunder clap from a clear sky. It 
was so sudden and so unexpected! My present engagement 
was to teach to the end of the college year; and only a few 
months of that term had expired. It seemed therefore not a 
time to look for such a thing as an immediate challenge to 
enter the ministry so soon after my licensure. For ten years it 
had been an inward anxiety to be fitted for the work. Seldom 
willing to confess it to my most intimate friends, nevertheless 
there was something still so sacred and awe inspiring in the 
office as to make it seem too far from my unworthiness to be 
yet taken as a personal work. More preparation seemed to be 
needed. A prompt decision was now, however, pressed upon 
my soul. Desiring to be led by the Spirit of the Lord, the 
prayer was most earnest and sincere to see the light, and to 
hear the voice calling to duty. The voluntary offer to release 
me from my teaching engagement also left the conditions 
without a form of excuse for drawing back ; and in much soli- 
citude and godly fear the call was accepted. What balance 
remained due at settlement for teaching in the institution re- 
mains unpaid today. 

At a special meeting of the Lancaster Classis in the First 
Reformed church in Lancaster, February 13th, 1854, a com- 
mittee consisting of Drs. T. Apple, H. Harbaugh and N. A. 
Keyes, laid hands on me and prayed, setting me apart for the 
work of preaching the gospel. I have no certificate of my or- 
dination. None was then or since given me. The testimony 
of the Spirit was given, as I believe, sealing the holy trans- 
action, and it greatly comforted me, and fortified a timid can- 
didate for his calling. 

All the purpose of this untried commission was to me and 
to the Pittsburg proposed interest, an experiment of vast risk. 
No such a venturesome mission in an entirely new field of a 
large city had as yet been taken in hand by the Reformed 




FIRST PASTOR GRACE CHURCH, 
Pittsburgh, Pa., 1854-1862. 
Personally Collected the Building Funds. 



A VOCATION. 



IOI 



church in this country. Example every way was wanting, 
after which to pattern the whole undertaking in a strange pop- 
ulation with no surrounding sympathy, where we had no 
footing. Then also an inexperienced man just ordained to 
the holy ministry, after a much broken course in preparatory 
theological training, might prove to be a colossal failure. By 
the favor of the Lord only it was not; but resulted by His 
grace in success. In going to take charge of a mission not 
even organized where we had no type to form it after, no other 
near sympathetic congregations, neither the one sent nor the 
church authorities had any very clear ideas of what was meant. 
A desire to become useful in the kingdom of Christ was a real 
part of my mind, heart, soul and strength. The work however 
was not just like what had been done anywhere else in large 
eastern pastoral charges. It was practically like beginning a 
foreign mission. 

A self-conscious estimate of one's sufficiency for any such 
work must be permitted to do its best. In the Lord, as Paul 
claims, we can do all things properly assigned as duties. With- 
out Him, nothing can be well done, and at best many good 
things will remain undone. While promotion to place of trust 
and duty should never tickle pride, yet an appointment by 
higher authority should at least spur moral courage in the dis- 
charge of entrusted duty. The purpose to try, is not vanity or 
presumption. If a mere ungrown youth knew that he could 
lift an iron wheel of over four hundred pounds, it is not min- 
istering to vanity to say so, and prove it in the effort. Subdu- 
ing the refractory colt, when others failed, was proof of the 
boy's powers — though some said it could not be done. Or, 
when one can solve a mathematical problem, others need not 
blame him for proving it by the trying — though they may have 
tried and failed. Even plain clothes need not keep one from a 
sure place in a class of better clad students. So a modest self- 
reliance helped shrinking faith to enter upon an untried work. 
High resolve to conquer morbid timidity, oftimes felt the 
whole frame tremble, and the knees smote together in the first 



102 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



weak ministrations of that risky mission. Was it a mistake to 
interpret the call to that place, as a plain duty? 

Young preachers in those early days had no such godsend as 
a liturgy or order of worship to rest upon as a guide or support- 
ing staff. Some men may never perhaps have studied liturgies 
for help in "people worship," enough to lead profitably in com- 
mon prayer. Those extra pious persons who do not want to 'be 
taught even by the Spirit of the Master to pray in proper or- 
der or form as Jesus taught His disciples, run on in very loose 
notions almost seeming profane in public divine service. Of- 
fering prayer as the mouth-piece of the congregation is a ter- 
rible thought in itself, to a timid young man, who has never 
heard "his own voice in meeting." That is deep water for him 
to plunge into. The young men's prayer meeting is perhaps 
the least embarrassing place for beginners. Of course the 
Spirit must indite the prayer. But often at first, will come 
confusion, rambling, stammering hesitancy and stumbling 
generally in public unedifying efforts to lead in the services. 
The poor publican's type of directness and brevity is not often 
followed. Tonguetied, awestricken, man scared and over- 
come by the great solemnity, the novice fails and cries out, 
Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples ! 

My ordeal in leading public worship was especially pain- 
ful. The brain would seem to swim, the head enlarge and 
float upwards like a balloon, till it would topple and strike 
about the ceiling of the room. Cold perspiration poured from 
the forehead at the end of the briefest effort and the soul sank 
in humiliation. It took years before this trouble wore en- 
tirely away. Next to the cross of martyrdom, it appeared to 
crucify and rend the flesh. Much of it came no doubt from 
a vivid personal realizing sense of the awful approach to Al- 
mighty God from the human side, as His messenger. On the 
pulpit many a time early efforts caused the whole frame to 
tremble. It was altogether something else than a lack of 
physical strength or courage. Of that, there was full share; 



A VOCATION. 



and the new preacher was not the one to fear men, as meeting 
them in business. 

The whole training reaching from about eight to eighteen 
years was perhaps not the best for the development of fitness 
for public speaking. Instead of favoring conditions to draw 
out native powers, the tendency was rather to repress and 
dwarf, to belittle and destroy reasonable confidence of person- 
al ability to do anything as coming from myself. So the young 
minister was not self-regarded as having any good degree of 
endowment for such public duties — not even on a full par with 
the average platform orator. 

A poor boy's early trainers had said he must not look as 
high as other people. Whatever he was able to say, or do, of 
course must not be expected to be anything but inferior in 
words and works. No thought or opinion was allowed unless 
at the cost of derision. Two uncles, having heard of fair col- 
lege grade, expressed open surprise (in German) that the 
little red head was "likely to amount to something" after all. 
In fact this was itself one reward of success, the satisfaction 
that my mother could feel a hopeful confidence. She was not 
to be disappointed. There was some triumph for the family 
in what he had won. Seest thou a man diligent, he shall not 
stand among mean men. But young people need not become 
vain as they learn. Indeed youthful ability ought to be culti- 
vated to the best, and drawn out in fullest exercise. The 
young people's society now helps many in this for the good of 
the church. Cherish and encourage all such work, for the 
young and for their after good works. If the old plan and meth- 
od used so long was the only one of divine providence for a 
good end, then confessedly it has not yet come to be fully un- 
derstood to this day. It may be that too much of this inward 
story has already been told here. 

Our comfort drawn from the catechism is certain truth ; all 
things come not by chance, but by our heavenly Father's 
will. If therefore we are not just what we could devoutly 
wish to be, by reason of what must be taken to have been the 



104 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



right circumstances and environments of childhood and youth, 
yet the good Lord may use us as to Him seemeth best. Hence, 
relying upon the divine guidance and help, and willing to take 
in hand the untried ministry and the then specially forbidding 
side of the proposed mission given by church appointment in 
following the call of the Board of Missions, a deep sense of 
duty decided me to go to Pittsburg, "not knowing whither I 
went." This willingness and some other gifts of grace divine 
were then and since the determining elements of personal ser- 
vice. While true modesty therefore may not claim more than 
its own, yet it should not be charged with anything sinful in 
trying to do an unsought imposed duty. But the adversary 
true to his own custom, often uses falsely, a sinister plea to 
carry out his plan in preventing one from doing right. It was 
suggested that Jesus was not the Son of God, else He would 
come down from the cross, and the people would then be- 
lieve Him. Similarly Satan tries to keep us from duty on 
some plea of man fear, and so frustrate the good intended by 
the Lord's servants. 

Trembling in distrust of self on the train, only four days 
after ordination, the unknown journey was begun, not con- 
ferring with flesh and blood. The untried missionary had 
never been west of the mountains, had not a single acqquaint- 
ance in the strange city ; and there were no Reformed churches 
— no historic name for us there, and no consulting brethren 
within many miles. A stranger in a strange land then much 
like our first missionary in Japan, with a heavy heart passed 
through the great tunnel of the Alleghenies, on the third day 
after it was opened for regular travel. The dark, narrow pas- 
sage was all that for him connected his old east with the new 
west. Many times while descending the western slope, still 
filled with heart misgiving came the wish that the train were 
reversed so that the untried journey be ended where it had 
begun. 

But the die was cast, and the destination reached in the 
dingy old shedding at Pittsburg. At the St. Clair hotel on 



A VOCATION. 



I05 



Sixth street, after a tasteless dinner, a gentleman came to hie 
and inquired if this were the Rev. Mr. R.? Extending his 
hand he announced himself as B. Wolff, Jr., who had noticed 
the name on the register as that of the person he was expect- 
ing. The newly met friend was however not as yet a brother 
in the church, though his father was an elder at Chambers- 
burg. And what was more a wonder, the genial young man 
for months afterwards did not promise to crown his warm 
zeal for the church of his long line of honored Reformed an- 
cestry, nor fill up his own great kindness to the missionary, by 
casting in his lot with the struggling scanty membership of the 
new mission. He had not yet publicly professed his love for 
Christ our faithful Saviour, to whose service he was conse- 
crated by infant baptism. Yet with the first class catechized 
later, he became a confirmed member, a Sunday-school teacher, 
a deacon, and elder of great influence and large beneficence. 
All this, with that of others, of value and service might have 
been lost to the old faith, in the sure hope of salvation to him- 
self and others, if this mission had not been established. The 
first thing he showed me was the place rented for holding our 
services. It was an old abandoned church used formerly by 
Dr. Brown's Psalm singing people, on Smithfield street and 
Virgin alley. It then belonged to a German who stipulated 
in the lease for only English preaching; fearing perhaps an- 
tagonism to the old German church declared lately independ- 
ent of all Synodical control. 

They had renovated the interior and tried to "whitewash" 
its dark and sombre walls to a shade of "stone color" ; but all 
their efforts failed to relieve my disappointed impression as 
to what its appearance should be. It reminded me most of all 
in tinge of a country blacksmith shop. I did not yet know the 
sooty nature of Pittsburg. As no formal notice of the new 
minister's coming had been sent in advance, and he having 
arrived Saturday afternoon, it was not possible to advertise 
public service for the next day. This fact fretted our impa- 
tient desire to begin to do something; but it also afforded an 



io6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



opportunity to attend Rev. Dr. Riddle's (Third Presbyterian) 
church in the morning, and Rev. Dr. Passavant's (First Luth- 
eran) in the evening of that first Sunday. Thus we were able 
to take in by comparison some surroundings, and make some 
reckonings as to the prospect of ever having such church edi- 
fices and congregations for the Reformed people. The miracle 
of the New Grace church was not then visible. It seemed al- 
most beyond the stretch of hopeful possibility. In nature, 
Ex nihil, nihil fit — out of nothing, nothing comes ; but God, 
out of nothing made the heavens and the earth. 

We had of course no Reformed fellow ministers within 
many miles around. This itself created a feeling of loneliness, 
like that belonging to foreign missionaries. The best minis- 
terial acquaintance and neighbor first of all was the Rev. Dr. 
D. H. Riddle, pastor of the N. S. Presbyterian church, Third 
and Ferry streets. He received the Reformed missionary most 
cordially, and treated him with genuine fatherly kindness. He 
welcomed me often to his study away up in the steeple above 
the housetops, and wished the new interest successs, speaking 
freely of some of his members who were originally Reformed ; 
and giving full privilege to enlist them, if possible, actively in 
the work. He was a personal friend of Dr. Nevin, and had 
written articles for our Review. In such hearty sympathy he 
invited me to take tea with his family, had me preach in his 
pulpit, besides introducing me to other city minsters as the 
missionary of the "English German Reformed Church." Then 
they would all laugh at the incongruity of our name as it for- 
merly stood. 

Rev. Dr. W. A. Pessavant, of the First Lutheran church, 
Seventh street above Smithfield, was a kind, benevolent, genial 
man, but withal intensely Lutheran — though himself born of a 
Reformed Huguenot father. He. seemed always jealously in 
fear that some of his members who were formerly of our Re- 
formed church might return to the church of their fathers. 
And he would carefully inquire what accessions we were mak- 
ing. If any members or Sunday-school teacher or children 



A VOCATION. 



107 



who had ever attended in his charge were mentioned in my 
simple confidence, he would soon visit them and seek to regain 
and retain his hold of them. Once when he thus asked me of 
our material, as was his wont, he was told in reply that it was 
dangerous to report to him, those who had come in with us; 
because it was found that when he learned of it, we generally 
lost by telling him of our affairs. His successor, Rev. Dr. C. 
P. Krauth, a much profounder scholar, in many ways broad, 
was a most narrow partisan of Lutheran theology ; but at the 
same time a genial and refreshing friend. Rev. Dr. W. M. 
Paxton, late a professor at Princeton was then the recent suc- 
cessor of Dr. Herron in the First Presbyterian church, Wood 
street. He was so dignified that one could not approach him 
very nearly; and he showed no mark of kindness or goodwill 
towards our mission enterprise. The only let down I ever 
heard from him was once at a Christian Association anniver- 
sary meeting, telling in an undertone Rev. Dr. Cookman on 
the platform, as he was rising to make the address, "Cook- 
man, grease the griddle !" which, obeying the advice, he did 
most effectually. Rev. W. D. Howard, of the Second Presby- 
terian church, Fifth street between Wood and Market, was a 
very different sort of a man. He had great suavity of manner 
and social kindness. He invited me repeatedly to preach for 
his people. Besides these, were Rev. Mr. Sparks, N. S., for 
whom I also preached. Dr. Nat. West, Dr. John G. Brown, 
Dr. Cookman and Dr. Elliot Swift were then among the prom- 
inent ministers of the city. 



ANTECEDENT HISTORY BEFORE GRACE CHURCH. 

Dr. Schaff in his lectures taught us that there were "Re- 
formers before the Reformation." And a classic authority 
tells that Greece had "Heroes before Agamemnon." That 
suggests that there is some history that goes before the special 
history of Grace Church; so some of it should be put on this 
record. 
R-9 



io8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Rev. John William Weber of Westmoreland, extended his 
services in 1783 to the German Reformed people of Pittsburgh. 
For some years he held stated preaching in private houses, 
and baptized the children, instructed them in the catechism, 
confirmed the young people, administered the holy commun- 
ion and buried the dead. Wm. Birely told me of what he re- 
membered of the church held in his father's house and else- 
where. This, according to the historic quotation of Rev. Dr. 
Harbaugh, was "before there were any other priests or par- 
sons outside of Fort Pitt." 

In 1787-8 the Penn's estate, John Penn, Sr., and John Penn, 
Jr., deeded a certain lot of ground, now at Sixth avenue and 
Smithfield street, "to the two German religious societies, that 
of the invariable (Unaltered) Augsburg Confession, and the 
other the German Calvinists, or Presbyterians, for one or 
more houses of worship." The same sort of gift was also 
made to the Episcopal church on Sixth street and the Presby- 
terian church, Sixth and Wood streets. The "two German 
religious societies" held their property jointly and together 
built a house of worship. And the arrangement then made 
continued for more than half a century. One minister served 
both denominations for the time being. If he was a Lutheran, 
he catechised and confirmed the Reformed children faithfully 
for their side. Or, if he was Reformed, then he did the same 
for the Lutherans. No stated length of time was set for the 
continuance of the pastor, of whichever side he happened to be- 
But whenever a change of minister came, he was to be of dif- 
ferent denomination from the previous one in charge. Rev. 
Mr. Kurtz, along in the early "twenties," was a Lutheran. He 
became a "Dunkard" or German Baptist, as he told me in 
Ohio when we had a pleasant interview. 

Rev. David Kemerer, a Reformed minister from eastern 
Pennsylvania, was in charge from about 1827 to 1841. Dur- 
ing his pastorate, the Reformed Synod, 1833, ne ld its annual 
meeting in the German church. When later in the early 
"fifties" the people in possession of the property declared 



A VOCATION. 



IO9 



themselves "independent" of all Synods — "gans unobhangich" 
— they were then neither Lutheran nor Reformed; and by 
their own act forfeited all claim to the property deeded to the 
"two societies." Of their attempt to get a title by an act of 
legislature mention is made more fully elsewhere in this book. 
When my request to resist the proposed enactment to enable 
them to remove the dead, reached Senator Penny, it was too 
late to prevent its passage ; but he immediately had a supple- 
ment passed covering the legal rights of the lawful claimers 
to the original grant. 

But there is also something else to be noted. About the year 
1838, Rev. Robert Douglas, a Reformed minister of the Mary- 
land Classis, went to Pittsburgh in the interests of the English 
grown people of the Reformed church. It is not clear who 
sent him or how he was made to engage in the work there. It 
would seem there were enough people with means willing to 
support a pastor. Rev. Mr. Douglass was a powerful and 
pleasing preacher and popular enough to make many friends. 
The Painters, Schoenbergers, Buffingtons, Zugs, Rahms, 
Reiters, Wolffs, Seanors, Whitmores, Rahausers and other sub- 
stantial people were within reach. We have not the records. 
Only tradition says C. H. Wolffe was secretary of the consis- 
tory. A hall on Wood street between fourth and third streets 
was rented fitted up with pulpit and pews. It looked promis- 
ing ; but Mrs. Douglass' health soon made it necessary to re- 
turn to the east, and the lingering case led to an indefinite sus- 
pension of the services. After paying the expenses, and grow- 
ing disheartened, the whole most promising interest disband- 
ed. The pulpit and pews were removed to the loft of Braun 
& Reiter's drug store, where we found them for free use many 
years after, when fitting the lecture room of Grace Church, 
for temporary services. The soreness of the disaster from this» 
failure was a heavy drawback to the new mission of 1854. The 
previously disappointed people had gone into other churches to 
enrich them with their means and growing families. 

After the Douglass failure a correspondence between Rev. 



no 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Dr. A. H. Kremer Carlisle, and Dr. Cornman and Eld. Geo. F. 
Rahauser was kept up for some time without results. They 
wanted a missionary to try the place for three months! 

Early in the first week of my work, after having met other 
friends of the proposed mission, the Rev. Father Kemmerer, 
of Wooster, O., came to pilot me around among the city people 
of his acquaintance. He had formerly been pastor of the Ger- 
man Church, Sixth and Smithfield streets. Some of these 
grown English families were thought to be such as might be 
favorable to the congregation about to be started. For six days 
he walked us over a large part of the city to visit the scatter- 
ed families ; and for this whole week of hard toil and many 
kind words mingled with prudent pastoral advice, the church 
owes his memory profound acknowledgment. This was my 
first week's pastoral work for the mission. The exploration 
was a hard beginning, with shades and sunshine. In the main 
it yielded real pleasure ; and we learned to meet the people and 
through those thus found we were able to make other acquaint- 
ances. Those who favored the project were taken down by 
name, but many of them never came to join in with the strug- 
gling interest. There must be true conversion and faith for 
cross-bearing. Our best material had already been appropriat- 
ed and grafted into other denominations ; and what was left 
lying around loose and neglected was not so easily awakened 
and revived to active Christian work. By the following Sun- 
day, the last week in Feb. the 26, 1854, due notice in the daily 
city papers having been given, we held the first public service 
for a possible English Reformed church in Pittsburgh, in the 
place rented, of which mention above has been made. The at- 
tendance present numbered upwards of forty, for which favor 
the Lord was thanked. Little or no enthusiasm was as yet de- 
veloped, and some came apparently out of mere idle curiosity. 
This somewhat dampened our ardor. We did not understand 
at first how great was to be the trial and how often the people 
too would be disappointed in the falling away of some, even 
from the few. 



A VOCATION. Ill 

Dr. Harbaugh's explorations a few weeks before that is, 
in Dec, 1853, showed a list of thirty-two names, mostly, how- 
ever, only reported from hearsay to him, of Reformed people 
living in the city. Several years previous, Rev. H. W. Super 
had spent a few days in diligent search and found adcolutely 
none ; it was to him like the needle in the haystack. And now 
it turned out that only a small number of those prospectively 
reported to the Board of Missions by Dr. Harbaugh were wil- 
ling to avail themselves of the church privileges actually with- 
in reach. In this list were direct descendants of at least six 
Reformed ministers — Hacke, Faber, Kemmerer, Stoey, Ra- 
hauser and Dieffenbacher. To their eternal shame be it said> 
that not all of these have as yet in these more than fifty years 
been gathered into this fold of the Good Shepherd. Those 
also of our more zealous and piously inclined people, who had 
joined in with the Lutheran, or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or 
Baptist churches were never recovered to the church of our 
fathers, especially if they had become rich enough to have been 
helpful material in aid of a weak church. The more worldly 
minded were lost not only to our church, but to the Christian 
faith. It must be stated as a historical fact therefore, that but 
seven persons, viz, W. E. Schmertz, Mrs. Amelia C. Schmertz, 
Geo. F. Rahauser, Mrs. Isabella Rahauser, Jno. Mish, Mrs. 
Sarah A Mish, and Diodorus Seculus Dieffenbacher were the 
only originals. Only one of these today survives. 

Gloomy days and Pittsburgh darkness of smoke and soot 
were in harmony with prospects of the untried enterprise. A 
ray of genial light was welcome. Such was the heartsome let- 
ter from my mentor friend : 

Lancaster, Feb. 23, 1854. 
Dear Sir : Your letter came duly to hand. I am very happy to hear 
that you arrived safely at your place of destination. I read down the 
first side of your -letter, which has something of a gloomy tinge with 
the same feelings ; and then brightened up on the other with the pleas- 
anter parts of the narrative. Your feelings, in passing through the 
tunnel, reminded me of the feelings I experienced when I first went 
to Lewisburg — as the boat passed in between the bluffs I felt as if I 



ii2 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



were leaving the world behind me. I was going where I would not 
know a single face. I found, however, many friends. I feel assured 
that you will do the same. Hardships, of course, are before you ; but 
you and I did not receive our training thus far except by self-denial, 
and we know also that to do good always requires an offering. 

When I had read your letter, Mary handed me the Bible for family 
worship, which I opened with my thoughts just full of the subject of 
your letter, at the 19th of Matthew. I felt the force of the last four 
verses. Read that in this sense. After all we must seek our comfort 
from the promises of God's Word. 

You will see again from the Messenger of this week that the pray- 
ers and sympathies of many are with you in your labors. Suffer not 
any apparent difficulties to discourage you — in the end the whole mat- 
ter will succeed, and much good will be done. 

I knew you would find Dr. Riddle a friend, not only so but you will 
find him an excellent companion. I know him, and you somewhat, 
and am sure that your minds and hearts will chime together. With 
him to go to in the hour of trouble and perplexity, and with several 
good, fine, wholesouled members as your church is blest with, you need 
not to fear. I am happy that you are to be so promptly assisted by 
Father Kemmerer. You will find W. Schmertz as good as a host. One 
trusty member, you know, is really as valuable as a half dozen indif- 
ferent ones. You have a tried hand by your side. 

Please let me hear from your soon again. Somehow I am ever 
thinking of you and your mission. Would like to hear the result of 
Rev. Kemmerer's visit ; and how you get along when you are once in 
your church. May the Head of the Church be with you. 

Yours in Christ, 

H. Harbaugh. 

The following letter from Rev. Dr. S. H. Geisy, dec'd, a few 
weeks after my work began in Pittsburgh shows his kindness 
and sympathy. It is also a picture of the degree of heartiness 
in Home Missions then in the Reformed church. Think of it ! 
Only about $900 for this cause in a whole year from the East- 
ern Synod. Two classes together promised $50 for the Pitts- 
burgh new mission. It was hoped Westmoreland, in whose 
bounds the new work was located, would pay the half of that 
pledge, $25, or possibly more. And the young missionary had 
a work before him of building a church for at least $10,000, 
only one-fourth of which could be gathered in Pittsburgh. 



A VOCATION. 



113 



What a burden to educate the church at large to a spirit of 
giving! It cost the pastor several years of personal toil and 
travel till he had secured from the congregations abroad $8000 
for the new Grace church, from which thousands were 
not long afterwards contributed to general benevolence in a 
single year. The new plan then adopted has made it rather 
easy to do such work in these later years. 

Greensburg, March 16, 1854. 

I am rejoiced, my dear brother, to see that you have taken heart to 
go up and spy out that land, not only, but really to occupy it. Great, 
no doubt, and numerous will be your discouragements and difficulties, 
but there are, I feel, many warm and liberal and praying hearts in our 
Church that will come up at once to your aid. My elder, Mr. Kiehl, 
as soon as he heard that you were going to take possession of the 
field, sent on to Dr. Fisher $5. 

There is a resolution on the Minutes of Classis, pledging itself for 
$50, so soon as the Pittsburgh Mission should be occupied. The Clarion 
and Westmoreland Classes were then united, but I feel no hesitation 
in saying that Westmoreland Classis will, at its special meeting, pledge 
itself to raise the half of that sum. 

Don't be discouraged. There are difficulties everywhere, and the 
more glory if they are nobly met and bravely surmounted. The whole 
Church, east and west, I feel, is much interested in the enterprise. As 
it has been fairly undertaken, the Church will not suffer it to fail. It 
will no doubt be a long time before the enterprise is placed upon a 
permanent and self-sustaining basis, but we all crawled before walk- 
ing, and many a fall and bump were received before that feat was 
accomplished. 

Truly your brother in Christ, 

S. H. Giesy. 

To Rev. G. B. Russell. 

Note. — If one liberal elder gave $5 and the whole Classis might be 
expected to give $25, what prospect had the inexperienced missionary 
to collect $10,000 for a church? 

General explorations and three months' ministrations pre- 
pared the way for the new congregation. A few were added 
to the above original seven. The congregation was consequent- 
ly organized formally by the missionary, May 13, 1854, with 
twelve members, and at the first communion 14 guests par- 



114 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



took of the Holy Supper. Geo. F. Rahauser and Thos. Hac- 
kett were ordained elders, and W. E. Schniertz and D. S. Dief- 
fenbacher were made deacons. Two of these first officers 
were ministers' sons, Rahauser and Dieffenbacher, and one 
was a baptized Roman Catholic, now a son-in-law of a minis- 
ter. The Westmoreland classis the next week, May 24, 1854, 
in special session at Greensburg, received the missionary into 
membership and ratified the acts of the organization, and made 
the congregation a part of that classis. 

The same week, the Ohio Synod met in annual convention 
at Greensburg, and as all the ministers were delegates, I be- 
came also, therefore, a member at once of said Synod. Its 
reigning spirit then was strongly, "New Measure." Rev. Dr. 
N. P. Hacke, of Greensburg, was elected president. He was 
a fine German scholar and was pleased with my theological 
and historical standpoint, and became my fast friend, remain- 
ing unchanged to the end of his days, after his continuous pas- 
torate in the same place for fifty-eight years ; and at his death 
I published a history of his charge from his notes, and a brief 
biography. Other friends soon were made also in the synod, 
where some of the general work early fell into my hands. 

A small country church, if I went to preach for them, would 
generally show a large audience ; but at Pittsburgh I was often 
ashamed when strangers happened to come in, that they should 
see the little congregation. Once it was an assembly of only 
twelve, but generally there were more, and after a while it 
looked small if there were less than a hundred or a hundred and 
fifty. Shortly after that synodical meeeting, Rev. S. H. Giesy 
called me to preach at the dedication of the first new church 
at Irwin. The communicant membership at that place till then 
had been eighteen, and two were confirmed that dedication 
day, making twenty. In the summer of 1854 Mr. John Irwin, 
the founder of that town, then offered to donate me personally 
by a deed any lot that might be selected on the main street be- 
tween the church and the railroad station, if only so much as a 
shed would be built on it. Today, unimproved, it would be 



A VOCATION. 



115 



worth some thousands. Only a few houses besides the church 
were at that time on the now busy thoroughfare. Mr. Irwin's 
family were Presbyterians. His wife was of the Dickey fam- 
ily from near Mercersburg. They begged me to found at Ir- 
win an educational institution for the Reformed church, and 
offered voluntarily to give a large piece of land on the eleva- 
tion above their residence, the finest site in Irwin, on which to 
locate it. 

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL BEGUN. 

A Sunday-school was organized March 12, 1854, in the 
afternoon. It had a fair opening, and grew steadily. At the 
first it was not large; twenty-one children reported the first 
day, Deacon Schmertz was made superintendent, though he 
always held his trust subject to the care of the pastor. Elder 
Bargett, of Woodstock, Va., had sent to the Messenger office 
five dollars to supply the mission school with Heidelberg 
Catechisms. For this Dr. Fisher sent us his Catechism Sim- 
plified. That was business. That was our first church litera- 
ture, and gave at once a positive type to the teaching of the 
school. For all the following years of my pastorate, the full 
Palatinate Catechism was taught and faithfully studied in the 
several classes. No one need tell me that the catechism cai* 
not be kept in favor and used with profitable acceptance in a 
well regulated Sunday-school with ever fresh and lively inter- 
est and advantage. The pastor's class, called by way of dis- 
tinction the "Bible Class," was made the special catechetical 
class, in which that confessional and doctrinal book was 
used as the main medium for teaching moral and religious 
truth and duty. From this class also came afterwards regu- 
larly the majority of additions, at every communion, to the 
membership of the church by confirmation. At one time all 
the teachers except one in the Sunday-school had been trained 
in the doctrines of the church in this class ; and they made 
good, reliable and well fitted teachers, too. This Bible class 
for those early years was a well fitted main vigorous arm of the 



n6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



mission, bringing in the trained children and through them 

some of their parents. It was the nursery of the church. Yet it 
was sometimes said by our sneering ministerial assassins that 
the people thus taken in were not trained in the catechism. It 
was not possible in such a new mission to get married and busi- 
ness people into a separate catechetical class, as in old congre- 
gation^. It bore good fruit, however, for many years, and 
could be used there now. 

For a time we had also a branch Sunday-school in the Pike 
street public school house. Not having the means for its sup- 
port, it went later into other hands and became a congregation. 
A German congregation whose hall rent I paid myself for 
several years for lack of care was allowed later to fall to 
pieces. We had not the encouragement from the Classis, to 
take care of what might have become a strong church or- 
ganization. 

FIRST CHOIR. 

I had occasion to pray earnestly about that time for a bless- 
ing on a certain choir quarrel. Among the other dishearten- 
ing troubles in the little church, was poor singing. The 
people gathered in with us had not been accustomed to hear 
their own voices together and they were literally afraid to 
try them without instrumental guide or help — often enough in 
rasping discord, when singiag in our church service. To be 
sure, Elder Rahauser, if present, would generally "raise the 
tune"; but he had hard work and little help and at best only 
weak support. Mrs. Schmertz and possibly a few friends 
joined indeed heroically to sustain the air. But sometimes all 
of these would be absent. Then it went hard enough for the 
poor young parson to do the reading, the praying, the preach- 
ing and the singing entirely alone, in a sort of solo, with a 
worn, cracked and strained voice, and no instrumental help. 
Those were not yet the days of common use for reed organs 
and trained children's and young people's voices to sustain and 
swell sacred song. But once after the opening service one 



A VOCATION. 



117 



Sunday evening, some young men and ladies came in, and to 
the very great joy and relief of the tired preacher, they 
joind heartily in the second hymn. That rested the preacher, 
who was already worn with all the church and Sunday-school 
service of the day. Announcing the last hymn, the minister 
then despairingly looked in the direction of the strangers ; and 
knowing that "a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse," 
he gave a sign and sat down hiding himself behind the pulpit. 
Presently notes of glorious song broke from the transient 
worshipers. All eyes turned and glad ears were pricked up 
to hear the unexpected melody of praise. 

After services were ended several of then? came forward to 
apologize, if necessary, for possibly mistaking my gesture. 
In turn they were thanked most heartily for their relief and 
aid ; and were asked to come again, and "do likewise." It then 
came out that they were the exploded remains of a choir just 
bursted up by a quarrel in a nearby church. They would help 
us, they said, temporarily, without pay if we provided only a 
bass violincello. Thence forward they remained our choir and 
we had elegant singing in our little church, without money 
and without price, and they soon became interested in our ser- 
vices. Also they came into my Bible class ; and in due course 
of time all save one of that choir were confirmed. I married 
two of them, made a deacon out of one and later an elder out 
of another of them. That choir quarrel resulted in our good, 
and we therefore blessed it. 

The cholera scourge visited Pittsburgh that first summer 
and before knowing much about it, some of its victims re- 
quired ministerial visitation. The members of the congrega- 
tion and myself escaped. So in the case also of the small pox 
patients that fell later to my care and visitation. Several con- 
demned murderers in the jail by invitation were attended reg- 
ularly, though it was not made necessary for me to be present 
at their execution. In the jail and also at the "House of 
Refuge," by request of the Directors, I held services for the 
inmates once a month for each place on Sunday afternoons. 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



In the Pittsburgh Young Men's Christian Association, just 
then first established, 1854, they made me corresponding sec- 
retary and later a vice-president. They sent me as the sole 
delegate from this association to the national convention held 
in Cincinnati. The pastor of the little church was made a 
"Life Director" of the American Bible Society by the pay- 
ment for him of $150 by the local Bible Society; and so Theo- 
dore Freylingheysen's name is on my certificate. At a public 
moral reform meeting held in Dr. Howard's Second Presby- 
terian church, they put me forward for one of the speakers. 
As one of the souphouse directors, which fed thousands one 
hard winter, our church was made more known by the pas- 
tor's activity in its work. 

At the fiftieth anniversary of the Christian Association, 
November 12, 1904, the officers gave me a special invitation 
to the joyous celebration. And from the banquet board at 
the Hotel Schenly sent me this telegram : "Rev. Geo. B. Rus- 
sell, D.D., LL.D. : Twenty-one survivors of the Pitts. Y. M. 
C. A., organized 1854, dining at the Hotel Schenly, with three 
score friends, send greeting. Signed, Benj. Thaw." 

THE NEW CHURCH. 

It was soon felt that we must have our own church edifice 
in which to worship. It must be centrally located, accessible 
on foot from all sides of the city, then without public con- 
veyances. And it should be respectable enough to command 
and invite attendance. The congregation however was too 
poor and too few to pay all it would cost, and it was unwise 
to incur a debt. The part of the city suitable for its location 
contained already within a radius of a few squares eighteen 
other churches. No Reformed church was nearer, however, 
than twenty-five miles, N., E., S. or W. Our people sub- 
scribed to the projected church $2500. The cost, whatever 
might be above that figure, must come from elsewhere. The 
church at large at that time had not yet been trained to help 



A VOCATION. 



HQ 



in building mission churches. Something- new and large must 
be inaugurated, if this work was to become a success. 

We planned accordingly something new and on a large 
scale too. So, on a certain Sunday evening after divine ser- 
vice, the consistory held an earnest meeting for consultation; 
and as a result they appointed me to visit forthwith other 
churches especially east, soliciting generous help By day- 
light the next morning, I was at Huntingdon, and before sun- 
rise had started to walk back across the Warriors Ridge 
some eight miles to Alexandria, where the Mercersfourg 
Classis was then in annual session. The matter was laid be- 
fore the Classis, and a plan of help was proposed by the mis- 
sionary. The Classis voted $1000 help, provided the mission- 
ary would be able to collect it in the Classical bounds. That 
was good for us and safe for the Classis. This beginning was 
accepted in faith, and the young pastor tried early to apply 
the plan in practical work. In the course of about two years, 
making many such trips, canvassing different charges; leav- 
ing the mission at home, often meanwhile without services 
in those frequent short absences ; meeting with some success 
and incurring sore trials and braving heartfelt disappoint- 
ments, these hard earned collections from abroad amounted 
in sum as far as can be figured now, to about $8000. Even 
this large aid along with our $2500 however was not enough 
to buy a lot and build without some small debt. 

Long journeys, in all sorts of weather, wet, cold, hot, in 
night rides to save time, in foot tramps of miles to save cost, 
in sickness and health, marking my early and toilsome work 
while collecting the funds to pay for Grace church, Pitts- 
burgh, will not soon be forgotten. The loss to me also of my 
student habits by these breaks on my mode of life, and damage 
to mental discipline, and other dissipating influences in dis- 
tracting attention superintending the general work of the new 
building, etc., forever unfitted me for what otherwise might 
have been gained in study. Had my settled student life work 
continued to be kept up in the years of my ministry, much that 



120 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



now must be set down to the sacrifice account might have been 
given to scholarship. True, there was gain in other respects 
as valuable experience and many kindly acquaintances were 
made among our Reformed charges, while in some places 
there was left also perhaps a mark for good. It not only dis- 
covered or invented and proved the successful plan for such 
church work, but establishel and set in practical operation a 
broad fraternal system of help from the stronger churches in 
favor of the weak places ; which has become in our Zion now 
an encouraging great work. It was not done, as now so eas- 
ily, tried; by simply resolving to get so much money "from 
the church at large," and then sending out circular calls for 
the money assessed and apportioned to be sent in ; and if this 
fails, then berate the Reformed people for the sin — which 
might not have been recorded, had some interested one 
brought the case in personal application to the congregations. 

It affords me pleasure to recall as a sort of a specimen ex- 
ample a trip into Clarion Classis in midwinter of 1856. The 
Allegheny Valley railroad had its formal opening to Kittan- 
ning in January of that year, and a free excursion ticket was 
given me along with other invited guests. Saving the fare, 
and also getting a free ride from Kittanning by sleigh to 
Reimersburg, the following morning from there on foot 
through snow drifts a tiresome journey was made to Callens- 
burg, where arriving weary, footsore, it was found my cloth- 
ing was frozen stiff from profuse perspiration; and I was 
hungry enough to enjoy a cold "speck and sourkraut" after 
dinner at the village tavern. It was Hobson's Choice. A hired 
one horse team took me thence to St. Petersburg, arriving 
there late in the evening to meet the Clarion Classis still in 
session, but just on the point of adjourning. 

A stirring speech on the object of my visit, and the story of 
my tramp was seconded by Ernst, Hartman, Dale and Leber- 
man, securing by vote conditionally a pledge of $1000 to be 
collected by me personally. And then I slept right well till 
Sunday morning. We went to church some miles across the 




GRACE CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, 1854. 
Sold after 50 years for $50,000. 



A VOCATION. 



121 



country, having engaged to preach for Leberman. By the 
time we reached the place, both my eyes were frozen shut, 
with ice balls as big as marbles hanging to the eye lashes. 
Ever since then, my eyes have been tender and watery ; that is 
bearing about with me for these many years such marks as 
witnesses. Upwards of forty two-horse sleds and sleighs 
were in the yard and a large audience in the church. After 
sermon an appeal for aid resulted in encouraging subscrip- 
tions towards the $1000 just voted by the Classis. A circular 
sent out, or a call issued in the church paper, or expecting 
some one else to go and do that hard work for the mission, 
would likely have altogether failed. 

Quite as hard a trip also came on a dark Sunday night after 
service at Lewisburg; there was a four miles night walk over 
a rough frozen road along the Susquehanna river to Miltoa 
in order to take an early train to Port Clinton, the only way 
of reaching Harrisburg and York for an effort to secure 
money — and then get home by the following Sunday. That 
day was set for holding the first service in the nearly finished 
basement of the new church. Saturday night a storm blew 
down some of the long timbers not yet well fastened in the 
spire, crashing through ceiling and floor into the ground be- 
low. Success and disaster go close on the same road. We 
held the expected service, however, by the favor of the Father. 

The new and beautiful church was finally finished for dedi- 
cation by the first Sunday in December, 1857. It cost, lot and 
all, about $12,000 in cheap times. The building committee 
that had the work in charge were W. E. Schmertz, Michael 
Whitmore, Thos. J. Craig, B. Wolff, Jr., D. C. Kamerer, W. 
M. Faber and George Reiter. At the dedication service, Rev. 
Dr. H. Harbaugh, of Lancaster, preached the special sermon ; 
in which he showed by historical reference to records that the 
Reformed people of Pittsburgh had occasional German preach- 
ing in private houses, the previous century, "before there was 
any priest or preacher outside of Fort Duquesne." The Rev. 
Dr. Zacharias, of Frederick, and the Rev. Dr. Moses KieflFer, 



122 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



of Tiffin, also preached during the series of services held at 
that glad time. The pastor, of course, dedicated the new 
home. We christened it "Grace Church," which naming had 
cost us some trouble from factious opposition to its adoption. 
Objection was made to it because Grace church, New York, 
was a much finer edifice. Many namesakes have since fol- 
lowed among the Reformed, east and west, that are not even 
so fine as this beautiful structure. It set a type for others. 
After fifty years the church has just been sold for $50,000 in 
order to build a finer one in another part of the city, leaving 
the poor here with no service. 

The Provisional Liturgy, just then first issued for trial, was 
introduced and used at the dedication, and during all my pas- 
torate thereafter. The pastor and consistory took it for 
granted, that according to the action of Synod, the book was 
to be fairly tried by use in the church. Dr. Heiner and Dr. 
Bomberger, both members of the Liturgical Committee, had 
prepared the way by writing favorable articles for the Mes- 
senger in behalf of the book. Its fitness as well as scheme of 
worship was not doubted, nor at first called in question. 
Hence, we had in general use, from the day of dedication 
onward, the main substance of the morning service, viz., the 
Invocation, the Creed, the Gospel and Epistle lessons for the 
day, the Collect, the General Prayer, the Sermon, a free clos- 
ing prayer and the Lord's prayer, besides Psalms or Gloria 
and Hymns, the Doxology and the Benediction. The re- 
sponses, left entirely to voluntary use were quite general and 
hearty. If this was new to the people, many of them had not 
been raised in Reformed households, it was not at all then 
repugnant. Grace church was thus the first in our denomina- 
tion to introduce and use with very slight modification, the 
general service of the Provisional Liturgy; and if no unfair 
outside partisan interference had been brought to bear, it is 
not likely that any serious opposition or troubling disturb- 
ance would ever have been known here or elsewhere in the 
Reformed churches. At least, it was not during my pastorate. 
All was harmony on the liturgy. 



A VOCATION. 



123 



No mere ritualism can be foisted into the Reformed church, 
except at a loss. The people as a rule are at heart churchly 
and liturgical, but not so high church as to be ritualistic. Dur- 
ing all my years at Grace church, the trouble did not once 
reach us. At that time the pulpit was central; it never was 
pushed to one side as a side issue. 

My eight years of ministration in this first pastorate were al- 
together pleasant, in full labors, some hard trials and rough 
knocks, solid prosperity and steady growth. My personal re- 
lations with the people were in fullest peace and general har 
mony. They bore patiently with my early inexperience and 
individual idiosyncrasies. A single exception, all the more 
marked as uncommon, grew out of a troublesome case of dis- 
cipline of an unworthy deacon, tried and suspended for cause 
on charge of dishonesty from full membership. He had his 
friends of the church, and they felt sore, and caused some dis- 
affection. But no internal need even to the end ever called for 
a change of pastoral relation. Numerous overtures from 
other places had 'been declined in those years. Besides the 
flattering offers from prominent charges, there were several 
colleges wanting me for president, and a big offer came for 
a New York ($4000) secretaryship. 

RESIGNED GRACE CHURCH. 

Early in the summer of 1861 the Ohio Synod held at Dela- 
ware had elected me editor and publisher of the "Western 
Missionary," now the "Christian World." This came about in 
an effort of several years to make that paper a weekly. The 
veteran editor had opposed that movement as impossible from 
financial considerations. An offer, however, came from a mem- 
ber of Grace church, Elder T. J. Craig, to bear all the financial 
risk at his own cost. The offer was accepted by the Synod, 
and my election as editor followed as a sequence. At that 
time I was publishing "The Pastor's Helper," the first Sunday- 
school paper in our church, established by me in January, 
1859, and continued for seven years. Besides this also, for 
H-10 



124 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



three years previous, I had assumed at my personal cost the 
publishing of a Mercersburg Review; which, because of its 
then supposed hopeless indebtedness under former management 
was threatened with discontinuance. But the Alumni Asso- 
ciation passed it over to me for relief. I had voluntarily agreed 
to take it with all its debts ; pay them, and thus secure its con- 
tinued existence. It was handed back to the society January, 
1862, in good condition, with a larger subscription list, having 
also paid besides the old liabilities and current cost of publica- 
tion, $150 annually additional as salary to the editors, who had 
formerly been compelled to do their work gratis. The burning of 
Chambersburg by the Confederates, cost me the loss of Review 
stock then on hand estimated at cash value about $1400. Other 
similar losses at that fire were partly covered by the State ap- 
propriation for relief of Chambersburg; but they excluded 
me from that benefit because not a citizen of that town, though 
losses in two other cases of non-residents were relieved by 
efforts of Dr. Fisher. 

Well, considering therefore that these several publications 
were enough to engage the whole time of one man, my resig- 
nation as pastor of Grace church was tendered to take effect 
at the end of the year, January 1st, 1862. It was accepted ; and 
flattering testimonials were recorded. Rev. E. E. Higbee, 
then of Tiffin, Ohio, was at my suggestion elected as my suc- 
cessor. But before the time set, it was found prudent for me 
to decline the editorship of the Ohio Synod's paper which had 
not yet been taken in hand ; though the pastorate here had al- 
ready been committed to other hands. 

The charge was left in great prosperity, with a fine new 
church and lot costing $12,000, an active membership grow- 
ing in wealth, and increased from the original seven members 
to one hundred and twenty-five, after accounting for deaths, 
many removals and other heavy city drains. The Sunday- 
school, better then as repeatedly stated by prominent mem- 
bers, than at any time since, had developed three candidates 
for the ministry and trained some most valuable members and 



A VOCATION. 



125 



officers. A three-story brick house offset by a small debt re- 
mained. The harvest of the first sowing others have reaped. 
It was only four years a mission till it became self-supporting. 
The President of the Board of Missions, Rev. Dr. J. H. A. 
Bomberger, sent the pastor and people a special letter of con- 
gratulations. Perhaps no other mission before or since, has 
been so short a time on the roll, and not all that time taking 
the full annual appropriation. None have made greater re- 
turns for general benevolence, by some thousands, than Grace 
church. The pastor's salary at the first was $500 a year, the 
Board only making up of that amount what the mission could 
not pay besides rent and expenses. After the dedication the sal- 
ary was $700 a year. All above that, for pew rents went to 
pay on the debt. His successors received $1500, $2000 and 
now reported at $3600, the largest pay in the denomination. 

Rev. Dr. E. E. Higbee, my successor, had been a fellow stu- 
dent in the Seminary. He was there already on my return 
to the college to become the tutor. He was a born Yankee, a 
graduate of Burlington University. He was converted to 
the Christian faith by reading Dr. Nevin's "Mystical Pres- 
ence" and other writings on the Church Question. Thus he 
was a native born son of the Reformed church ; with strong 
will and moral power, bright, keen, intuitive, finely nervous 
temperament and ready to grasp the broadest generalizations 
in metaphysical and theological studies. He was able to con- 
centrate every power of his thoughts on the subject in hand, 
and had a memory that could hold fast what he read from 
every available source. He determined, he said, "to learn 
German, if it cost him all the hair of his head" — and he had 
not much hair to spare. But he never became as familiar with 
that tongue as with the classic Greek. Whatever he may just 
have learned a few hours before, 'he could discuss with the stu- 
dents as though he were of old long master of the subject — 
even making of himself thus a seeming pedant. Most merciless 
as a critic, too, he would expose to the bone the defects of his 
opponents. This perhaps is what made him so unpopular with 



126 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the professors at Tiffin — by some of whom he seemed to be 
cordially hated. In the Western Synod he once made a strong 
plea for better training of those who were to become preach- 
ers: "For heaven's sake, give us ministers who can spell!" 

Himself generally a briliant pulpit orator, he at times flat- 
tened out as badly as others, to his own deep chagrin. This 
is said to have happened once at Baltimore; so that he after- 
wards earnestly sought an opportunity to redeem the poor 
effort from disgrace. The next time, he did himself full 
credit. His years at Tiffin were not marked with special suc- 
cess either as professor or as pastor of the First church, built 
under his pastorate. In both relations he suffered persecution 
from those set against him. He was therefore glad when 
told that the pastorate of Grace church, Pittsburgh, was open, 
and he had been recommended as my successor. This was 
while he entertained me at his house when I was at Tiffin de- 
livering -the annual literary address to the students of Heidel- 
berg. After his settlement at Pittsburgh he became embit- 
tered against me and held this strong feeling for years. Later, 
however, he treated me again as a special friend and brother. 
At Mercersburg Seminary and College in after years, he rose 
high, and came down low again, after the seminary was re- 
moved to Lancaster and Dr. Thos. G. Apple was elected to 
fill his professorship. With all his talents as preacher, teach- 
er and lecturer, Dr. H. had not much practical success as pas- 
tor, nor especially in college finances. His official service in 
the following years as State Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion was a great success. He here found his place, and ele- 
vated the office to a high standard. In his earlier years he 
opposed the defective public school system; but he came into 
the State Superintendency with a modifying power for good 
that was far reaching. 

It was doubtless one advantage to have held close personal 
relations with a man of such marked abilities. His early 
death seems a double loss, to education and to the progress of 
the Reformed church, whose own spiritual son he was proud 



A VOCATION. 



127 



to proclaim himself. Nevertheless his personal opponents 
were wont to call him a "Yankee foreigner" among us ; though 
in fact he was as really theologically and ecclesiastically "to 
the manor born" as those who grew up here from childhood. 
He never belonged anywhere else in any church. His won- 
derful power of concentration made him in all things intense. 
For instance, once out jacksnipe shooting, with his eye only 
on the bird, he banged away not noticing who might be in 
range ; and some of the flying shot went perilously near my hat. 
He was ever a most fresh and genial social companion, full of 
anecdote and story, and a powerful debater. 

A recent letter from the pastor of Grace church, Pittsburgh, 
is given herewith: 

My Dear Dr. Russell: Making a collection of photographs of the 
former pastors of Grace Church, to be framed and hung on the wall 
of our church-parlor, we greatly desire that of the first pastor. Not 
many of the present members know you personally. Only six were 
among your parishioners. But we often speak of those who taught 
and wrought in former years, and your name is a household word 
among us. We could not do our work today, but for your faithfulness 
yesterday. Grace Church will always feel a sense of indebtedness to 
her first pastor. And to help keep him in remembrance we greatly 
desire his picture. 

That you were honored of God to be the first pastor of Grace 
Church, Pittsburgh, and of Grace Church, Washington, D. C, are 
doubtless among your sweetest memories. And it has been a constant 
inspiration to me in my ministry to strive to be a worthy successor of 
the noble men who led this people in the long ago. 

I hope your health is good, this Fall. You may be pleased to know 
that my father was with us several days last week, preaching in our 
new Christ Church. He preaches nearly every Sunday for some 
brother, or in some vacant pulpit. Kindly remember me to Mrs. Russell 
and your daughter, to Miss Reiter and her brother. With high and 
warm esteem, Cordially and always yours, 

John H. Prugh. 

Nov. 13. 1907. 



X. 

A Change 

HAVING approached the matrimonial altar five times as 
second man, the noose by familiarity began to seem 
somewhat harmless. The first time, whilst yet a mere youth, 
was for my school teacher, Prof. John Kilbourn, who invited 
me to become his best man. But on seeing the beautiful and 
stylish bride's maid, fear filled my timid heart and the post of 
honor at the last moment was declined in favor of a friend and 
schoolmate. The second time was to take the groomsman's 
place for my college friend, the Rev. Samuel Philips. This 
required a buggy ride of twice fifty miles, in going and re- 
turning. A third venture was for my uncle. A wedding 
party of four of us went to Philadelphia, Baltimore and the 
east generally on a tour of several weeks. A fourth similar 
service was up the Susquehanna, at Milton, where Rev. W. 
Goodrich found a lovely bride, and Miss Louisa Zeller, 
daughter of Rev. J. Zeller, was my gentle partner. The next 
time it was somewhat changed; for I had to act as "brides- 
maid" at Rev. Lucian Court's third marriage. That was held 
in the First Presbyterian church of Allegheny. The occasion 
for this was that bad roads prevented the bride's intended 
friendly service by a young lady from Clarion county and the 
next best thing was for me by request to act as a substitute; 
and the groom's third trial was made complete. We all 
marched up to the altar while I supported the blushing bride. 

Familiarity with danger is said to increase courage. So 
then, at the next venture my part was to take the first place. 
No longer too young and foolish after being in the pastorate 
nearly six years, there was not so much likelihood of mistak- 
ing the path of happiness divinely made for man. Domestic 
relations we know have much to do in the real differences on 
any man's life. Ever since a half-grown boy, I had not 



A CHANGE. 



129 



known or enjoyed a real home. The nature of my work too, 
when having entered once upon a special service, and its ne- 
cessity for self-denying economy, had kept me from entang- 
ling alliances in general sooiety, while at college and since, 
prudent considerations did not allow any such social freedom. 

Our pastoral theology too had taught that it is generally 
not best to marry a wife and a new charge at about the same 
time. So after six years in the successful pastorate of the 
mission, with Grace church now built, and collecting tours 
which had taken me often away, no longer so necessary, there 
came a time when boarding houses could be left for others, 
and a domestic change for myself could be hopefully made. 
The high resolve was therefore a proposal which has been a 
personal blessing to the present time, through nearly fifty 
years. Thus has been made up in rich return all the previ- 
ously enforced lonely onesided life, which had hitherto been 
my lot, and which had been taken willingly and submissively 
as from the Lord, for what it was worth, during those long 
years. 

If this were intended for a love story, you might expect a 
sweet tale of real happy experience — not a fiction. Instead, 
take the assurance of its blessedness. "A good wife is from 
the Lord," and His choice for me was thankfully taken in 
answer to faith's fervent prayers. While pledging our mar- 
riage vows, my former trembling again smote my knees to- 
gether; though never for a single hour thereafter came there 
any regret for having taken that dear devoted girl to be my 
wife. She has been a perennial joy, and comfort, as well as a 
helpmeet, a perpetual song in the house of our pilgrimage. 
When I had occasion to congratulate Rev. B. Bausman, who 
had also long remained unmarried, he sent me a most touching 
acknowledgment and thanked me cordially for expressions of 
good wishes, as from one who knew what it was to make the 
blessed change, in store for him, but for which he could now 
first have reason to be devoutly thankful. A fellow feeling 
makes men wondrous kind. 



I30 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

On Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1859, we became one 
in the Lord. My brother, Rev. C. Russell, performed the mar- 
riage ceremony and gave us the seal of the divine blessing. 
The bride was Caroline Amelia, second daughter of Elder 
George Reiter and Caroline his wife, who was a sister of Rev. 
Dr. Nicholas P. Hacke. The Reiter family came from Balti- 
more and lived in Allegheny where their children all were 
born, and where my greatest earthly boon was found. It made 
a wondrous and happy change to the lone missionary. Other 
details were out of place in a simple record like this. On the 
auspicious morn she received these lines : 

You will mark this day's thanksgiving, 

Fresh with joys of a new life; 
Here ends thy girlhood's living — 

To become a pastor's wife; 
Now the youthful quest resigning, 

Hope for greater bliss in store ; 
Leave the past, without repining — 

For the future good implore. 

No such morn will like this ever 

Be the same to thee, my bride! 
True united souls ne'er sever, 

While a-down life's stream they glide. 
Like this wedding day, be many 

Crowned with blessings from above ; 
And from this, thy life's new era, 

Flow unfailing streams of love. 

Joining hands and hearts here vowing, 

God now joins two souls made one; 
While each day before Him bowing 

Plead for grace in Christ His Son, 
Be on earth a life of joy thine, 

And eternal life above. 
God bless thee now my Caroline, 

In our wedded bond of love! 

Love rhymes of previous declaration and proposal, as well 
as others, are purposely omitted; but as the record of a half- 



MATED AND MARRIED. 



A CHANGE. 



131 



way mark, "the silver wedding," reference has some right to 
follow the above home-made lines: 

THE SILVER WEDDING. 

Five and twenty years a wife, 
Years of precious married life! 
Aye ! The Silver Threads of Grey 
Grace the Silver Wedding day. 
Years of toil and care have gone; 
Joys and blessings free have come. 
Trials with their briny tears, 
Sorrows, griefs, and anxious fears; 
Peace and comfort, sturdy health, 
Plenty, home and frugal wealth. 
Changes oft, of house and place, 
Laboring in the gospel grace; 
Working, waiting, reaping — all 
Subject to the Master's call. 
One dear child our home doth bless 
With domestic happiness. 
Short this chain of family ties — 
Not one link yet broken lies : 
Myriad mercies from above, 
Still may crown our growing love. 
Israel's Keeper guide and cheer, 
While life's end is drawing near. 
When its sunset glories die, 
Ent'ring golden realms on high, 
May the Everlasting Word 
Still unite us in the Lord ! 



WHAT THE MOTHER LATER SAID. 

We have a wee sweet darling, 

She is four months old this week; 
But she laughs and crows and listens 

To the words of love we speak. 
Our Louisa Rose, we call her, 

While we kiss her angel face. 
She's not an unsaved child of wrath. 

Since we've Christened her in grace. 



132 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



And we tell her, daily praying, 

That a lamb of Jesus' fold 
She is now, a holy being; 

For St. Paul of such has told. 
And we tell her, Jesus takes her 

To share His covenant love; 
That He, in His gospel makes her, 

More than angels are above. 

Jesus makes the "little children," 

Become the heirs of heavenly rest; 
In His arms of wondrous mercy 

Folds them to His sacred breast. 
"She's too young," you say, "to learn this" ; 

But her child faith laughs replies, 
What her guardian angel whispers, 

From her loving deep blue eyes. 

— Amelia. 



WHAT THE CHILD LATER SAID. 

Easter Sunday Rose was sick. Not able to go along to 
church, she was left alone at home. On our return this was 
found on the desk — her first attempt at verse. 

For me, my Lord was crucified, 
For me, my Savior bled and died; 
For me, He hung upon the tree 
Three hours in mortal agony. 

For me, His flesh with nails was torn, 
For me, were felt the scourge and thorn; 
For me, He suffered shame and loss, 
For me, He groaned upon the cross ! 

Oh, wondrous love to bleed and die ! 
To save a sinner such as I ! 
Grant, dearest Lord, to me Thy love — 
That I may dwell with Thee above. 



A CHANGE. 



133 



This also was found later: 

Hail, Thou Prince of Peace! we sing, 
Hail, our Prophet, Priest and King! 
Hail Thou ever blessed Lord ! 
Be by earth and heaven adored! 

Our High Priest, at God's right hand, 
With Thee, Son of Man, we stand; 
Thou, our Savior, Brother, Friend, 
All our hopes on Thee depend. 

Keep us ever, dearest Lord, 
Trustful of Thy promised word, 
For unnumbered mercies given, 
Life eternal — bliss of heaven. 

HIS NAMES. 

Jesus, Savior, Christ, the Lord, 
Prophet of our God, the Word; 
Our Redeemer come from heaven. 
Ransom for doom'd sinners giv'n. 

Messiah of the Royal line; 
High-Priest, Sacrifice Divine, 
Sprinkling blood the altar o'er, 
Purging guilt for ever more. 

Mighty God, Begotten Son; 
Son of Man, the Eternal One, 
God-man yielding up His breath, 
Mediator, suff'ring death. 

King, descending to the grave — 
Hades en'tring souls to save. 
Victor, Conqueror of hell, 
Prince of Life — His triumphs tell. 

Resurrection, Easter-tide, 
Master, Refuge, Rock, Light, Guide; 
The Way, the Truth, the Life; afar 
Shining the bright Morning Star ! 

Tender Shepherd, to the end, 
Art the sinner's only Friend ; 
Second Adam, still the same 
Judge of all, the Holy Lamb, 

Alpha, Omega. Amen ! 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 

Lord Jesus, our King! 

In carols we sing, 

While praises we bring 
And the Incarnate Word, we adore. 

Thy birth among men, 

We welcome again; 

In joyful refrain 
Singing, Glory to God, evermore — 
To God Evermore. 

Our Savior, new born, 

We hail Thee this morn ; 

Thy manger adorn — 
Bringing myrrh, frankincense, and gold. 

Good news to our race ! 

Thy gospel of grace 

Gives sinners a place 
In Thy Kingdom; as prophets foretold — 
As prophets foretold. 

O Christ, God's own Son 

The Infinite One, 

Our hearts Thou hast won! 
With peace and good will to all men, 

We worship Thee, Lord, 

Thy Name be adored! 

Paradise is restored! 
Blest be our Redeemer. Amen! 

Our Redeemer. Amen ! 

EASTER. 

Resurrexit ! Jesus lives ! 

Lord of Life, forever King, 
Life to each believer gives — 

Easter Anthems let us sing. 

Victor over Hades, risen; 

Conq'ring death by power divine; 
Frees from sin, unbars our prison — 

Easter glories 'round us shine. 



A CHANGE. 



135 



Christ triumphant from the tomb, 

Sends His messages of grace 
To the fearful saints in gloom — 

Easter joys light ev'ry face. 

Glorious Savior, risen indeed ! 

With Thy resurrection love 
For Thy people intercede : 

Easter praise we'll sing above. 

Receding years began to look fuller in numbers when these 
lines were written : 

ON MY BIRTHDAY. AGED 70. 

Seventy years ! To God be praise, 
For the full measure of man's days — 

Three score and ten. 
Are mine! He lengthens out my life, 
To win the prize — 'mid toil and strife. 
Jehovah's arm yet guards my way 
And brings me to this natal day, 

At three score years and ten. 

Seventy years ! Oh the long years — 
In sorrow's tears, in sin, and fears ! 

Three score and ten. 
Of life and love from God above; 
Yet pulses move His grace to prove 
Through all His plan of life's short span, 
In childhood, youth, and later, man — 

To three score years and ten. 

Seventy years ! Yea, blessed years, 
Though the leaf sears, some fruit it bears — 

Three score and ten ! 
Yea, let the fig-tree longer stand; 
Oh, angel, wait the Lord's command ! 
Christ Jesus may Thy Spirit give 
Me fruits of grace, long as I live 

To Thee! Amen, Amen! 



136 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



LOVING. 

1 love Thee, Lord, would love Thee, 

All that my heart can love. 
More precious grace, Lord, give me 

To love like those above. 
Thy love, in Christ revealing 

To me, good will and peace, 
Thy cross in blood is sealing, 

From sin and death, release. 

In the Incarnate mys'try, 

My crown of life is won, 
O Father, Thou my Father be ! 

In Jesus Christ Thy Son. 
O Son of God, the Son of Man ! 

Communicate to me 
Thy grace in th' redeeming plan, 

That saves eternally! 

O Holy Spirit, quick'ning 

Beget new life within — 
By miracle renewing, 

And purify from sin! 
Sweet Comforter imparting — 

Let all Thy fruits be mine. 
Then shall my heart rejoicing, 

Be filled with Love Divine. 

At 82. 

Years of undying devotion, more than mere words can ex- 
press, continue to testify how great has been the Lord's favor 
in the inestimable providence by which we were "married and 
mated." Her father was on the building committee of Grace 
church and an elder in the congregation. Her uncle, on the 
maternal side, was the patriarchal pastor at Greensburg for 
fifty-eight years. Both families are of Huguenotic ancestry. 
She was one of the first members of my Bible class, was then 
catechised and confirmed; and afterwards was a Sunday- 
school teacher; also a member of the choir. All through my 
ministry she has been a helpmeet from the Lord, a joy and 



A CHANGE. 



137 



comfort in toil and dark days of trials ; and much of my work 
has been tinged, inspired and cheered by her devout spirit 
and faithful colabors. In at least four other missions she was 
the organist, unpaid, and always far more popular among the 
people than her husband. She was a faithful worker, stay and 
support in the Sunday-school. Our only child, a daughter, 
was born several years after our marriage. Rose has been a 
great blessing and comfort to her parents. She is healthy, 
cheerful, musical, docile, obedient, self-helpful and withal do- 
mestic, a sincere child of the covenant, an humble Christian. 
She was baptized in early infancy by Rev. Dr. Higbee ; and 
when twelve years old, was at her own request confirmed by 
her father, and consistently adorns her profession. The Presi- 
dent of the United States once in a personal interview at the 
White House, took from a drawer his large photograph like- 
ness and appended thereto in our presence his autograph. Then 
in a nice envelope handed it to Rose and gave her a kiss on 
her blushing cheek. 

My younger brother, Rev. C. Russell, died at our house in 
Philadelphia from a virulent attack of "black small pox" dur- 
ing the fearful prevailing epidemic of that disease in that city. 
He had to be hurriedly buried in Glenwood cemetery opposite 
Laurel Hill, the same day at evening, November 17, 187 1. The 
funeral service, attended by three of us was held in our parlor. 
A church historian is mistaken in giving the place of his death 
as Camden, N. J. In a somewhat similar way I also buried 
Rev. S. H. Giesy's first wife who died years before of the 
same loathsome disease in Greensburg, Pa. His infant daugh- 
ter, Anna, was baptized by me at the same time. The funeral 
address at the burial of Rev. Fred'k A. Rahauser; also that 
of Rev. Abner Dale, as well as that of Rev. Dr. N. P. Hacke, 
it was for me to deliver; and I officiated at the marriage of 
three Reformed ministers. 

By invitation I held a funeral service for a Roman Catholic, 
a sweet little girl and buried her in the Roman Catholic St. 
Mary's cemetery, Pittsburgh, the like of which perhaps no 



138 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



other Protestant minister before or since, has ever found it pos- 
sible to do. I held German service and preached the first Eng- 
lish sermon to the German Reformed congregation in Law- 
renceville district, Pittsburgh. Similarly I preached the first 
four English sermons to the German St. John's church, Cham- 
bersburg, which I reorganized and provided for their transition 
from German to the English, by a change of their constitution. 

PREACHING EFFORTS. 

My preaching especially at the first made me feel quite 
ashamed of my efforts, seemingly so inadequate, instead of 
what I desired. The first time was at Milton, Pa., while visiting 
at Rev. J. Zeller's. The congregation was vacant and Elder 
Frymier asked me, a mere green student, to preach ; and sub- 
sequent to the sermon I would much rather not have met any of 
the people at least for some time after the plunge. Then Dr. 
Heisler persuaded me during the same stay along the Sus- 
quehanna, to preach in his church at Lewisburg ; where he said, 
by way of assuring me, there would be "nothing but cabbage 
heads" to hear. But enough intelligent people were there to 
greatly discompose me. The next time it was at Fort Loudon 
for Rev. Jacob Hassler ; there Captain H. Easton gave me en- 
couraging sympathy, and a good dinner. Then on an ex- 
tremely cold day the pastor at Mercersburg sent me next to 
meet his appointment by a long horseback ride over the North 
mountain into the "Little Cove," at the "Big Tannery." El- 
der Peter Cook and Deacon John Garver kindly told me "that 
would do for a young man's starting efforts." The next time 
was my first sermon in Pittsburgh. 

When beginning in Pittsburgh a few days after my ordina- 
tion, the preaching was not at all satisfactory to myself. It 
must have seemed to the people often very frail, crude and 
feeble. It was possibly with the small congregation before me 
more like teaching a large Bible class. But they kindly bore 
with me patiently ; and many a kindly hint from an intelligent 
lady member was helpful for later work. Suggestions too 



A CHANGE. 



139 



from a judicious critic, Dr. Hacke, of Greensburg, served me 
well ; and he noted with encouraging mention any subsequent 
improvements. There had been literally no training in rhet- 
oric and elocution at that period, either in our college or sem- 
inary. Each one had to blunder on as best he could at his 
own risk, as to style or manner of delivery ; and many ser- 
mons perhaps otherwise of fair average production, fell far 
short in comparison with those by men better trained. Our 
theological students in these later years are more favored; 
and it is a great blessing that the change is on the rising grade 
at least as to manner and style of speaking. 

As a rule, plain people were generally pleased well enough 
with my sermons. A Presbyterian elder, who was a director 
at the House of Refuge, said to me one Sunday afternoon, 
when it had been my time to preach there: "That sermon I 
liked first rate. In fact it was better than if it had been rale 
orthodox." He meant, if it had been bristling with Calvinis- 
tic "points" then in high favor. In a union church in Clarion 
county, a doctor who was a Lutheran, called out after ser- 
vice, "I'll give five dollars for that sermon." One evening in 
Pittsburgh a young man left the church remarking to a com- 
rade, "That durned red-headed preacher just meant the ser- 
mon for me." The first knowledge, however, I had of his 
presence, was afterwards when told of his remark. A minis- 
ter once told me: "Your sermon on Thy vows, 0 God, are 
upon me, turned me into the ministry." A man unknown to 
me addressed me one day in a Northern Central railway train 
and said: "Sir, your sermon on Ps. 1:1, preached in the 
Paradise charge up the Susquehanna river more than twenty 
years ago, sticks to me yet." A gentleman in Tiffin, Ohio, 
during the late meeting of the General Synod at that place, 
remarked: "Forty years ago I heard your address before the 
literary societies of the college here," and then he recalled 
some of the sentiments and illustrations used on that occasion. 
At Washington, in the first year, they said the preaching was 
getting "better and better," The late Colonel G. B. Wiestling 
R-11 



140 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



told me, after the last preparatory service we held at Mont 
Alto, just before his final sickness : "That was the best sermon 
I ever heard in all my life, save one in Harrisburg years ago 
on the text, Tomorrow." A lady from Delaware some time 
ago called to mind a service 37 years ago. Yet I never have 
been regarded or rated as a special preacher. Thanks be to 
the Lord, for what little evidence has been given, that the 
sowing of His truth has not been without lasting lodgment in 
some hearts. His word shall not return unto Him void. 



XL 



Editing and Publishing 

SERVING like Jacob of old, twenty years for what he 
loved seems after all, when it is over, too small a labor 
to remember. Twenty of the best years of my life have been 
spent, besides preaching, most of the time in editing and pub- 
lishing for the Reformed church. "Once an editor, always an 
editor, or bust," was the dictum of Dr. Alexander Clark, the 
veteran editor, who died at Gov. Colquitt's house while on a 
lecture tour in the South. He was a genial friend, and though 
he had eight sons and every one of them, as he told me, had a 
sister, yet it is doubtful if they altogether could equal their fa- 
ther. He was a natural born editor, like Dr. W. C. Gray, of the 
Interior, who inherited his talents from his mother. He soli- 
cited special articles from me and paid for each in a good 
check. 

In my college years Dr. Fisher was pleased to publish oc- 
casional from me. And afterwards at Pittsburgh he engaged 
me (at fifty cents a week) to write regularly something for the 
Messenger, assuring me that I was then the only paid contrib- 
utor. After a while an unfortunate article was regarded by 
some one as personal and that broke up this arrangement ex- 
isting for years. 

Then came my work at publisher of the Review for a term 
of years. This was before the starting of the Pastor's Helper. 

The Mercersburg Review was first published Jan. 1849. In 
its infancy its sphere was small indeed, commercially. It was at 
the first issued in the name of the Alumni Association, with a 
"wee" circulation list of less than 200 ; which was not doubled 
in ten years. Dr. Nevin was editor, serving gratis, as did also 
the publishing committee. Several years before the removal 
to Lancaster, my service on the committee and treasurer also, 
made me acquainted with its affairs. By strict economy it 



142 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



barely paid its way here; but its business afterwards in other 
hands at Lancaster ran up a debt of about $1200. It was in 
1857 thought to be hopelessly insolvent. Few assets, no en- 
dowment, no financial backing, it was proposed to be discon- 
tinued and buried. At a venture, I then offered to take over its 
management at my personal risk and publish it for three years 
to come, assuming all its liabilities and paying besides its 
debts, $150 a year for editing, something never known before, 
and return it with clean balance sheet at the enci of that term. 
This was accepted, and Drs. Shaff and Gerhart for the Associ- 
ation signed the contract with me. 

AS A MATTER OF HISTORY HERE IS GIVEN THE CON- 
TRACT TO LIFT THE REVIEW OUT OF DEBT. 

Articles of agreement made this First day of October one thousand 
eight hundred and fifty eight, between Geo. B. Russell, of Pittsburgh, 
Pa., of the 1st part; and E. V. Gerhart, T. Apple and Philip Schaff, a 
Committee of the Alumni Association of Franklin and Marshall Col- 
lege of the 2d part. Witnesseth : 

First. That in consideration of conditions hereinafter named, the 
parties of the 2d part, acting under authority to them given by said 
Association, do hereby in their name and for the said Association, sell, 
convey and properly transfer legally, to the party of the 1st part, all 
the concerns of the Publication known as the "Mercersburg Review," 
including, 

1. The Subscription list with the annual proceeds thereof, together 
with the public good will to the unlimited increase of the same during 
the existence of this contract. Also, 

2. All the right and title to the Book accounts due for subscription 
or otherwise to the said publication. Also, 

3. All the back numbers of the said Review now on hand and those 
accumulating during the continuance of this contract ; together with 
whatever belongs to the assets of the above Review. 

Second. The said party of the first part hereby engages and binds 
himself, in consideration of the above conditions being well and truly 
performed by the parties of the second part, to assume the payment of 
the present debts of the said Review, and continue to publish at his 
own cost and risk, the said Review in the same style as at present, 
during the term of contract. 

The said responsibilities include the following, to wit: 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



143 



I. The present debt for printing and expediting the Review, which 
sum it is understood does not exceed one thousand and fifty dollars. 



2. An amount of $300 to be allowed for the management of the 
publication committee during the past two years. Also 

3. The annual expense for printing and expediting the Review, in 
the style and manner as at present issued. Also, 

4. Appropriate $150 dollars a year for editing the Review, so long 
as the cash subscription list does not exceed four hundred and fifty 
subscribers. In case the list exceeds this number, then $200 a year is 
to be paid for the editing of the Review. 

Third. The party of the first part further agrees that if in case the 
cash paying subscription list, at any time during the existence of this 
contract, shall reach five hundred and twenty-five copies of the Review, 
at an average of two dollars and fifty cents per copy; then the Alumni 
Association of Franklin and Marshall College shall receive one half 
of the net annual profits of the publications. 

Fourth. At the termination of this contract the party of the first 
part will surrender to the said Association the Subscription list of the 
said Review with its numerical increase and the good will of the public. 

Fifth. The parties of the second part engage themselves and the 
Association they represent, to co-operate for the increase of the sub- 
scription list, and the success of the Review. 

Sixth. This contract shall continue in force unless changed by the 
mutual agreement of the parties herein represented, for and during the 
term of three (with the assent of both parties of five) years, from 
Jan., 1859. In witness whereof we have hereunto attached our hands and 
seals, the date above mentioned. 

(Seal) Geo. B. Russell. 



Before Jan., 1862, all was fulfilled to the letter. The Re- 
view alive and with debts paid and an increased list of sub- 
scribers was given back to the Alumni Society. But on ac- 
count of the Civil War and high prices, the publication for a 
few years was suspended. 

This is Dr. ShafFs farewell after the event : 



Also, 



(Seal) 
(Seal) 
(Seal) 



E. V. Gerhart. 
Phil Schaff. 
Theodore Apple. 



Mercersburg, Pa., May 7, 1862. 
Dear Brother: I received your favor of Jan. 2 last night with two 
drafts for $65. This makes $71 .received for editing Review, besides 



144 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the $100 received Oct. 20, i860, leaving a balance of $6 due, as you 
correctly state. I received no other money except the $6 from N. Y. 
Lib. Ass. I always found you a prompt and reliable business man in 
all your dealings with me. Our connection has been to me a very 
pleasant one, and I regret sincerely that it has come to a close as far 
as the Review is concerned. 

After your definite refusal to publish it any longer, the Alumni Com- 
mittee, it seems, made some efforts to secure a publisher in the city 
but without success, as might have been expected at this time, when 
the book trade is almost annihilated in consequence of the war. I 
then proposed to Dr. Gerhart that I would be one of three or six gen- 
tlemen to assume the risk of publishing for one year, Messrs. Kieffer 
& Co., to be one of the party. Dr. Gerhart wrote to Dr. Fisher, but he 
refused to enter into the arrangement, and Dr. Gerhart it seems is 
likewise unwilling. So the matter has fallen through for the present. 

Personlly I feel rather relieved, for I prefer to concentrate my lit- 
erary labors on the continuation of my Church History and a Com- 
mentary on the New Testament. The Review has at all events ful- 
filled a mission in the world and will form a chapter in the history of 
the German Reformed Church and of American Theology. 

I reciprocate most sincerely your kind wishes for the new year. May 
it be to us all a year of grace, and bring peace to our distracted country. 
And, let me add, a good charge to you. 

With kind regards to Mrs. R., and a kiss to the heiress in the priest- 
hood. 

Yours truly, 

Ph. Schaff. 

Hopeless as the case had seemed, my report of its success 
and an increased list was finally made. The old accounts on 
subscriptions had not yet all been collected; indeed, some of 
them are not yet paid me to this day. The burning of Cham- 
bersburg by the Confederates destroyed for me about $1400 
worth of Review stock, from which it was hoped some of the 
outlay would have been made good. The first word or act of 
sympathy for my losses and services is yet to be received. When 
in later years the publication was renewed as a mark of recog- 
nition, I asked that a complimentary copy be sent me for my 
former work, it was bluntly refused. Of course, I did not 
then subscribe for myself, and never will, nor have any others 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 145 

become subscribers since by my efforts. Narrow ingratitude 
does not always pay, even in business. 

At the conclusion of my contract I had a set of the extant 
volumes of the Review then published, neatly bound in moroc- 
co backs and presented them to the Historical Society. This 
is Prof. W. M. Nevin's answer in acknowledgment: 

Lancaster, Jan. 6th, 1864. 

Rev. George B. Russell. 

Dear Sir: At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the His- 
torical Society of the German Reformed Church in the United States, 
held, Dec. 26th, 1863, in the study of Rev. Amos H. Kremer, Lancas- 
ter, it was unanimously Resolved, That, in view of your very accept- 
able present of the bound numbers, 13 vols., of the Mercersburg Re- 
view, from 1849 to 1861, inclusive, for which, in the name of the So- 
ciety, they return you thanks, you be constituted, in accordance with 
the unaltered Constitution, a life member of the Society ; of which fact 
I take pleasure in informing you. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Wm. M. Nevin, 
Sec. of Hist. Soc. of G. R. Church in U. S. 

In 1866 the Review, which had been by the Alumni Associa- 
tion suspended during the war times, was revived. In the in- 
tervening years before this Dr. Fisher had repeatedly over- 
tured me in pressing letters "as the most fit man for the work," 
to undertake to revive the Review. Others, as Dr. Harbaugh, 
also suggested and urged the same. The publication now is 
supposed to belong informally to the Publication Board. Not 
for a single year to this date, 1900, as far as now known has it 
fully paid current enpenses. 

"The Pastor's Helper/' 

In Jan., 1859, I issued as personal editor and publisher the 
first number of the Pastor's Helper for "Sunday-schools and 
Families." It was thought to be a wild venture, the first, and 
for years the only, English S. S. paper in the Reformed 
Church. It paid its own way from the first; but for some 
years of high prices during the war it was not profitable. The 



146 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



price of good printing paper was then twenty-two cents per 
pound, such as is now less than one-fourth of that cost. Yet 
the Helper was never more than $12 per hundred copies a year. 
Its regular circulation while issued by me went up to 14,000 a 
month, and began to pay for the earlier unprofitable years. But 
after its success of seven years, the Eastern Board of Publi- 
cation began to see what was in it. They then very innocently 
(?) asked me to turn it over to them, without money and with- 
out price, and gently ( ?) threatened also that if this were not 
done, they would start their own S. S. paper ; which would of 
course surely cripple the Pastor's Helper, and make both un- 
profitable. Without remedy to me, and with no offered re- 
muneration for my past risk and unpaid labor for its seven 
years, they simply forced the transfer; and without any con- 
sideration for the deal. It is strange, as another fact worth 
mentioning, that the secretary of the Sunday-school Board in 
writing a history of early Sunday school publications entirely 
ignores the existence of our first paper published in that in- 
terest. 

The name of the little paper was after the transfer then 
changed to "Treasury." 

In 1868, '69, '70 and '71, when I was in the Publication office 
as an editor of the Messenger, it reached a circulation of over 
22,000 annually and was by $2,000 the best paying publication 
then issued by the Eastern Board. All the other publications, 
except the Almanac, for which I also had secured paying ad- 
vertisements to an income that more than covered the cost, 
that is to say, the Messenger, the Review and the Kirchenzeu- 
tung were sinkers in the Board's funds. The Pastor's Helper 
had broken new ground and made the subsequent success of 
the Sunday school paper and other S. S. literature in the Re- 
formed church possible and profitable. It had held high rank 
from the first — some thought too high. Elder Santee, for in- 
stance, said it was a good paper, but put the feed too high up 
in the rack for the lambs. This hint was a lesson to me then, 
and should be to others since. Some editors of the church 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 14? 

papers, however, have not yet learned this much about the high 
racks, above the people's reach. 

THE ALMANAC. 

Of the Almanac, it may also be mentioned historically that 
the plan and purpose of its publication originated with me. I 
had prepared and laid open to Dr. Harbaugh privately at the 
Synod the plan of the Almanac enterprise. He was asked to 
join me, and was told that some intended matter and contents 
"were already gathered. He eagerly favored it. In no long 
while thereafter he wrote me, however, that his friends i» 
the Board of Publication wished him to edit the proposed 
Almanac; which they now intended to issue. That left me 
out. Thus history of the projected goes before the actual, and 
the new possibility before it was born was taken out of my 
control. This publication since the first few years, that is, 
after my connection with the office at Philadelphia, had intro- 
duced the paying advertisements, has been a source of revenue 
to the Board. This mention of the Almanac episode, is a his- 
torical fact not generally known to the church. 

BOOK EDITOR. 

Dr. Harbaugh, with others also, for some years before his 
death was deeply concerned to have the Messenger made 
more suitable to the wants of the people. It was, he said, too 
"stolid, inflexible, dry and stereotyped" in its weekly issues. 
Had he not been elected to the Seminary faculty just then, he 
would doubtless have been made the editor of that church 
paper. His next plan then was to infuse at least some other 
new blood into the old publication. With a view to that, he 
proposed different men at one time or another as joint editor. 
When all fell short, he then suggested that there should be a 
so-called Book Editor elected, to provide for publishing new 
books and incidentally also especially give new tone to the 
church paper. Dr. Fisher seemed to fall in with this. But his 
main idea was narrow and selfish as to a Book Editor, who 



148 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



must gather needed funds from the church for the use of the 
much involved publication house. In Dr. Harbaugh's sickness 
and consequent absence from the Synod at Baltimore, 1867, 
the report of the committee on the project formulated no clear 
idea for the work of the new editor. The election fell to me 
with only crude plans set out for the office, and for more than 
a year my time was given to the solicitation for money. In 
cash, notes, subscriptions and promises near nine thousand 
dollars were reported to the Board, which with about fifteen 
thousand or more that Dr. Bausman secured after the Cham- 
bersburg fire and $27,000 realized from State relief fund, 
ought to set the machine in running order. There has been in 
fact more gathered from the church than was the net loss by 
the burning, although that has been the sympathetic cry 
for aid. 

The plan aimed at was to get funds to publish new books, 
and from the profits to enlarge the scheme. But the income 
from the sale of the books, profits and principal, was eaten 
up by the old debts. A number of books were published. But 
soon Dr. Fisher vetoed that work and the plan failed to meet 
the promise held out by the Philadelphia Press: 

A "Book Editor" has been elected by the Synod to take charge of 
the work in this department. It is now in the hands of Rev. George 
B. Russell, under whose supervision a number of books have already 
been issued. With the necessary and sufficient supply of funds fur- 
nished by the Church, an unlimited field here lies open to the Publica- 
tion Board, which wisdom and common business prudence will not 
allow to remain unoccupied. 

Besides a series of the most sterling books for families and Sunday- 
school scholars, among which we may mention "Father Miller," "Old 
Schoolmaster," "Rogatian," "Holiday Stories," "Easter Eggs," "Leo 
Rembrandt," and "Ripe Harvests," they have also made a fair begin- 
ning in theological, doctrinal, and miscellaneous publications. 

Dr. Harbaugh's works on the "Future Life," "Heaven," "Heavenly 
Recognition," "Heavenly Home," "Life of Schlatter," "True Glory of 
Woman," "Golden Censer," and "Poems," have prepared the way for 
one of the most remarkable books now in the trade, called "Harbaugh's 
Harfe," a collection of the author's poems, written in the Pennsylvania 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



149 



German dialect. The publication of this unique gem marks an epoch 
in this kind of literature and gives new character to the house issuing it. 

Dr. Nevin's works on the "Mystical Presence," "Anxious Bench," 
"History of the Heidelberg Catechism"; and also Rev. Mr. Bausman's 
"Sinai and Zion," Dr. Gerhart's "Philosophy and Logic," Rauch's "In- 
ner Life," "Wanner on the Family," "Tercentenary Monument," and 
Rev. Mr. Russell's "Creed and Customs of the Reformed Church," de- 
serve notice. Their catalogue containing the above and other books, 
is worthy of the attention of book-buyers generally, and of those more 
particularly, who take an interest in the living issues which are now 
agitating the most earnest minds in the Protestant world on the great 
Church question. The number of copies of books printed by this house, 
according to last year's synodical report, amounted for the year to 
fifty -three thousand nine hundred and fifty. 

EDITOR OF THE MESSENGER. 

Then the Board of Publication, without my knowledge and 
with Dr. Fisher's full consent, elected me one of the editors 
of the Messenger, an office held for three years; and the edi- 
tors' names stood equally together at the head of the paper. 
The present editor overlooked that historic fact and published 
Dr. Bausman as "the only surviving ex-editor." After the pub- 
lished misstatement by the editor, Dr. Musser's attention was 
pointedly called to the inexcusable error, but he has not had 
the manliness, the honor or sense of public duty, or the truth- 
fulness as a man to correct the historic lie. It stands on the 
open record of the Messenger, and various exchanges referred 
to the published fact like this :* 

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. 

At the quarterly meeting of the Board of Publication, held on the 
7th instant, the Rev. George B. Russell was associated with us in the 
future editorial management of the "Messenger." He will also assist 
us in various ways, in giving extension and efficiency to our general 
publication operations. It is not intended by this arrangement to in- 
terfere with the position, to which he was appointed by the Synod, as 
Book editor. This, of course, is to claim his first attention. As, how- 
ever, for the present, at least, the duties of this position will not occupy 
all his time, and assistance is greatly needed in the way indicated, the 
Board felt, that it was not only justified in availing itself of his leisure 



* Evidently there was a misapprehension on the part of Dr. Russell inasmuch as 
the editor of the Messenger referred only to editors-ia-chlef. 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



time, but fortunate in being able thus to secure the services of one, 
who is so well qualified in various ways for rendering the desired as- 
sistance. We have no doubt the arrangement will meet with general 
approval from the Church. He will enter upon his duties immediately, 
and we trust, that under this new arrangement, not only will our read- 
ers be essentially benefitted, but also the efficiency of our publication 
operations greatly increased, and the general interests of the Church 
proportionately advanced. 

Besides this he was Incog. Editor from November, 1895, to 

1899, as Dr. Musser must surely know.* 

"An Additional Editor. — The 'Messenger' announced the appointment 
of Rev. Geo. B. Russell by the Eastern Board of Publication as Editor 
of that paper. He is at present the Synod's Book Editor, but his duties 
in that department are of such a nature as not only to allow but to 
qualify him for efficient service in the new position to which he has 
been assigned by the partiality of the Board. We wish Mr. Russell 
the happier experiences without any of the severer trials of the Edi- 
torial Chair!" 

There was little room ever given me to change the tone of 
the paper. About 1000 names were added to the list, and 
some were cut off. It was clear the plant was not paying its 
way, but had been for years running behind. Relief must 
come. A Lancaster party offered to do its work for $1500 a 
year less than the manager was paying at Philadelphia. The 
proposition was rejected with scorn, and a storm followed. 
The Board then tried to cut down office expenses, scaling sal- 
alies, in the chief's absence one evening. The affected parties 
at once referred this action to me, or at least that it had been 
presumably taken at my suggestion. 

There must have been either a leaky vessel in the Board 
itself or some stealthy listening ear secreted at the time of that 
meeting somewhere at the office ; for the result of the Board's 
confidential deliberations were bruited through the office be- 
fore nine o'clock the very next morning after the previous 
evening's session. The Board honestly aimed at economy, so 
that the income should not fall short of the outlay. They 
wanted to learn from some one about the inward workings 

* Dr. Russell was one of a number of editorial writers employed by Dr. Charles 
G. Fisher, who was not only Editor-in-chief, but also Business Manager. Naturally 
after I>r. Musser became Editor-in-chief this policy was discontinued. 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 151 

of the office, which they never seemed to know, and they plied 
me with questions which were not willingly at first answered 
in full. Acting as their secretary, however, and being one of 
the equal editors also in the service of the Board, they thought 
it due them and the church to receive from me full, open state- 
ments of the case under their direct official inquiry. Finally 
in the confidential relations thus existing, they put the matter 
to me personally. "What would you do if the business were 
your own?" Well, then in honest, trusting confidence they 
were told my idea of the best way to make ends meet. On 
this they acted seemingly in utmost good faith. However, I 
would not consent to be used as an instrument to push the 
old men aside. 

But the Board was indebted to Dr. Fisher for upwards of 
fifteen thousand dollars which he had accummulated in large 
salary to him. He used this leverage to make them pay up or 
restore the four hundred dollar cut from his $2400 salary. 
But the clerks failed to get the rise asked for in their behalf. 
All were enraged at the result and joined loudly in denouncing 
me as a traitor in the house. My resignation at once as secre- 
tary was offered and soon also the office as one of the editors, 
to close January 1st, 1872. This ended my four years of un- 
satisfactory work: one year as Book Editor, and three years 
as one of the editors of the Messenger. The old editor had 
now as before absolutely his own way, and continued in sheer 
self-will to pay $1500 a year more than the paper could have 
been published for elsewhere, on the guaranty of the best se- 
curity. He was in fact a power greater than the Board. He 
had more will and backbone than they. He was the publica- 
tion establishment. He tried to convince me some years later 
that we had "always been friends." I pitied him when at a 
later time he felt the serpent's tooth and had to plead publicly 
before the Synod for the "old horse not to be turned out to 
grass." His day for bull-dozing the Board was past. His 
memory is still, however, cherished for considerable ability 
and what hard endurance he earlier bore for the publication 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



interests. He had accumulated a considerable fortune, which 
went at the father's death to his son, who bought the pub- 
lication interests outright, and in a few years all was dissolved 
like frost work; not leaving enough to meet the liabilities. 
This is another proof that every man has his day; but some 
do not know when their day is over. At all events my resig- 
nation had been timely sent in, thus cutting me free from the 
tangle. 

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER OF THE REFORMED ERA. 

After leaving Philadelphia and returning to Pittsburgh, a 
proposition was brought before the Synod to start a paper 
for the people of that part of the church. There was interest 
enough on the subject to elicit a full and general discussion 
in the Synod, ending in rather reluctant leave being given to 
make a trial, if it could be done without cost to the Synod. 
Two elders engaged to bear with me the risk of actual cost for 
one year in publishing the proposed church paper. The edi- 
tor was to serve without salary, and his work of superintend- 
ing the publication must also be at his cost. 

These hard conditions were accepted for the good of the 
cause, and in January, 1873, the first number in an issue of 
5000 copies was published. It was called "Our Church Pa- 
per." But at the same date, by a singular coincidence, a paper 
for the Lutherans bearing the same name was issued in Vir- 
ginia. We thought best then later to change our name, and 
so it was called "The Reformed Era," which the Lutherans 
did not appropriate. It became at once very popular among 
the people. The ministerial brethren of the Pittsburgh Synod 
generally gave it a hearty support and some of them sent in 
over 200 names with prepayment from single charges. The 
regular circulation soon ran up to over two thousand copies. 
It became a welcome visitor and helper among the families 
of the Synod and was very generally read with profit and 
pleasure. It also reached others beyond its Synodical bounds. 
No paper was sent to a subscriber without the money paid in 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



153 



advance. Thus there were no delinquents, no bad accounts, 
and no loss on the subscription list. This showed too, the real 
interest of the people, who were willing to pay for what they 
got and wanted. The end of the first year left but a very small 
balance short of expenses, and the two elders were discharged 
of their responsibility. 

The Messenger management and interests of course were 
bitterly hostile. So indeed was also The World. But the 
staunch friends stood firm and bid defiance to all opposition. 
The Synod at the next meeting appproved the paper's course 
and spirit, and entered into a ten years' contract with me for 
its publication at my own personal risk and sole expense, and 
in consideration of this the Synod pledged its hearty sympathy 
and entire patronage. Such moral obligation should have se- 
cured me against any subsequent breach of good faith. Yet 
truth to say, one of its ministers at a later annual meeting 
less than two years after that moral and legal contract was 
made, actually brought forward a resolution in open Synod 
recommending the Messenger to the favor and support of this 
Synod's people and offering it a warm welcome among the 
members in our field. He did not seem to have any sort of 
consciousness of the bad faith and moral obliquity in thus re- 
pudiating the Synod's previous broad contract honestly made 
and still in force. Rebuking the unrighteousness of the pro- 
posed action brought on no little friction, leading to a per- 
sonal antagonism lasting over a quarter of a century. 

The Reformed Era at that time, it may be said with much 
satisfaction, was prosperous and growing. It knew how to 
speak to our people, and they took it warmly to their hearts. 
Its editor and publisher was satisfied with the very small bal- 
ance left for him at the end of each year. Once, however, he 
lost nearly the whole year's paper stock by a fire in the print- 
ing office. The eastern publications became jealous of its 
popularity. Dr. Higbee told them plainly in a conference 
openly held for the purpose of uniting it with the Messenger, 
that its character was becoming known and by its merits it 



154 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



was "knocking at the doors of our people, where it was soon 
likely to crowd out the eastern paper." While the one was 
neglected as reading for the family, the other was welcomed. 
This meeting led to a formal overture for a union of the two 
publications. The East offered not to me but to the Pittsburgh 
Synod the undivided two-sevenths of its whole assets set down 
then as estimated at forty-two thousand dollars, and also two 
members in its Board of Publication, as consideration for the 
union of the two Synods' publications. The bait took. The 
blind greed made party feeling that would gladly gain as was 
thought the estimated $12,000, by bartering away my legal 
and moral contract rights, without counting on paying me a 
dollar in consideration for my past three years of unpaid risk 
and labor, together with the yet seven years of prospective 
commercial advantage ; which really offset much of the sup- 
posed value for which the Synod was expecting a two- 
sevenths gain of eastern assets. After securing that in favor 
of the Pittsburgh Synod at my sole personal cost, they did not 
provide for any common just remuneration to me. All the in- 
tended gain by the unfair transaction, as all now know, turned 
like other cheats, in the end, to ashes. The eastern $42,000 
assets, as reported, were non est inventus — did not exist — or 
came to naught, to zero, a lottery blank. 

My venture and good judgment in originating The Re- 
formed Era for the church in the Pittsburgh Synod was emi- 
nently a proud success and it made a historical point. The 
work and fruits of that popular and useful publication are set 
to my lasting credit — if not to pecuniary gain. In all honesty 
it was to have been expected that some provision should have 
been made by the parties interested in the unfair deal, for my 
loss growing out of the Synod's breach of its contract. Some 
direct or indirect equivalent surely belonged to me in return 
for what was seized and taken by combined force contrary to 
law and justice. But the Eastern Board now refused to pay 
any consideration, because, as it was said, they had bought 
nothing from me, but only took the transfer of the Era from 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



155 



the Pittsburgh Synod. And the Pittsburgh Synod, which was 
supposed to have gained the above share of $12,000 at no 
cost except their act of dishonesty, refused to pay me anything 
on account of its violated contract; since the union was ef- 
fected, as they said, for the good of the church! Formal con- 
ditions indeed had not been set up for the well known equitable 
claim! But where was the honest dealing? 

Parties divided in the Synod and a bitter contest was on. 
Finally a nominal compromise offer of a small sum, one- 
twelfth, was made to offset all the Synod's supposed gain, at 
the simple expense of my labors, success and good will in the 
sacrifices of three years' work — and seven years yet of hopeful 
growth covered by the contract. Even this settlement was 
obstructed afterwards by the willful refusal of Rev. John W. 
Love, the Synod's president, to sign and issue the order on 
the treasurer as provided by the formal action of the body 
over which he had presided. 

Some thought it right to provide in some way for me in the 
new combine. One hostile member of the committee, however, 
by a single vote tied the Synod to act as a unity, and hindered 
that plan. Thus the Era, as well as previously the Almanac 
and the Pastor's Helper, was gobbled at the sacrifice of one 
man's rights. But in the last greedy deal the Synod unwit- 
tingly cheated itself ; gaining only supposed assets, which soon 
vanished entirely as an item of value. What was promised 
and hoped for from this deceiving union of the two papers by 
parties to the bargain so unfair to me, was not realized. The 
Messenger failed to satisfy the previous readers of the Era, 
and lost many friends. 

Editing on the Messenger again, however, by a sin- 
gular turn came to me twenty years later. Some months be- 
fore Dr. Chas. G. Fisher's sudden death, he had engaged me 
regularly to write editorially for that paper. In a few weeks 
he began to publish congratulations sent in on the improved 
life, vigor and spirit of the Messenger, which seemed, as it 
was said, to be "renewing its youth." It was called a "real 
revival," an "inspiration," etc. 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



He frankly then wrote me approving letters, and the ar- 
rangement was growing into satisfactory condition, when he 
suddenly died; and new complications followed in the wake 
of the change. 

Called away in full official harness, his early and unexpected 
death caused considerable disturbance and confusion in the 
management of the Messenger, before it settled again into 
something like regular order. My contributions, however, 
continued to be regularly sent. But they were often put to 
most irregular use by the new powers at the office. They 
were not found together in their appropriate place on the first 
part of the editoral page. Fragmentary, some were there; 
some on the fifth page noted by special reference, and some 
on the thirteenth. Most of them could have been classed for 
all that was known with miscellaneous good selections. Some 
one of the new hands undertook even to edit me and my con- 
tributions. Anything I sent, having some point, or marked 
with idiosyncratic expression, or revealing any of my per- 
sonal style, or identity, was either cut out or let down to very 
commonplace phrase. This vexed me greatly, as it seemed to 
place me like an old horse in a treadmill. Under the new con- 
trol, my articles thus eviscerated, were still however published. 
My relations under this form continued thereafter for about 
three years or more, when my incog, relations to the Messen- 
ger quietly and suddenly by common consent ceased. 

By my motion at the Potomac Synod"s sessions in Altoona, 
the election of Rev. J. C. Musser as editor of the Messenger 
was "ratified and confirmed" because the previous action of 
the Pittsburgh Synod had been called into question as prema- 
ture, being only a single party to the contract, and it required 
a majority of the Synods. This my amendment secured for 
the new editor. 

Restricted, hampered and doctored thus as my editorials 
had been, they of course could not give much decided im- 
proved tone to the paper, or modify greatly its stereotyped 
weekly character. It is not vanity, or if it is, there is no shame 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



157 



for me to say that I claimed to know a little better than some 
young bosses, what the people want and need; and also what 
will convert the readers to a love for the church paper, which 
has long been so much a matter of indifference to the majority 
of them. This self-conscious opinion is seconded by many 
men of good judgment. Good as our paper is in high, staid 
dignity, learning and much contents of excellence now, it is 
yet nevertheless mainly only fit for the few — not for the many 
of the Reformed people. It is in a sense foreign to the Re- 
formed household. Some one perhaps reads the Messenger 
with delight and profit; and then he writes to the editor that 
it was never quite as good as now; is in his hands growing 
better. He feels tickled and circulates the compliment. This 
gives occasion for another some one to show equal apprecia- 
tion, thus multiplying individual party praise. But there are 
thousands who do not express their dislike to the high strung 
and too advanced tone of the paper that has pleased but rela- 
tively a few. Those long three column classis essays and new 
theology revelations are not read by one in a hundred, and 
the progressive theological chowder dish remains untasted 
by the multitude of our plain members. They are not much 
profited by the learned contents, and after a while do not open 
the paper with much hope of being edified and benefited, and 
thus it fails to interest the families. Some, week after week, 
do not unfold it at all. Then follows delinquency in pay and 
final discontinuance. The list does not grow, except by extra 
spasmodic efforts, "'work! work!" to make up for steady re- 
curring losses from the list. 

Our church paper, as should have been long since learned, 
and now be well understood, is for the general use of the great 
body of Reformed People. The greatest good to the great- 
est number, must be the law. If that is not the main object 
of its publication, then its plan, no matter how excellent 
otherwise, is a relative failure. The sooner our authorities 
and astute managers see this and learn to make it a help and 
blessing to the people, the better it will be for the Reformed 



i5« 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



church. What does the Board of Publication do to give the 
right type? One thousand readers well pleased with its high 
and learned critical tone, are not to stand in the way of the 
ten thousand who are not much as yet interested in such con- 
tents. This is not written in personal interest, for my day is 
over. But the fact is true, the best editorial writer is not the 
most classically learned man in the new theology of the 
church. The born editor is one having common sympathy 
and feelings with the people, and who can reach them. He 
ought to prepare and select what will touch their warm hearts 
and affections so as to edify them. In this sense, the paper, 
to be a success, must be made popular. Half a dozen of my 
articles of this tenor while acting as the incog, editor, were 
rejected — apparently for no other reason than that they tried 
to bring out some such truthful and essential things as are here 
indicated. 

My editing days are, of course, over. What has here been 
said is not of a character to further any personal matters now, 
But if my last word shall help some one hereafter who can take 
a suggestion and make in the future a way open for the grand 
success of our church paper in the many homes of the best 
people of our land, my reward will come. The Messenger, 
once proud of having become a "weekly," became also a weakly 
and dull, and is now too high and dry in a sense of up-to- 
date science fad that must be modified. Every member is not 
to be exactly like all the fossils that were gathered before. The 
new century, let the present editor learn, may be a good time 
for a fresh start on the right track — for which let all pray. 
But above all the church paper is not to be used to make pop- 
ular among our plain Reformed people the vagaries of the 
age or the party errors of the new theology ; and then tell the 
people thus and thus and so thinks the Messenger or the editor 
of the Church Paper. 

BEFORE "THE WORLD" WAS. 

One more editorial matter. The Ohio Synod at its sessions 
in Delaware, June, 1861, elected me editor and publisher of the 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



159 



Western Missionary, which became later The Christian World. 
Before that day it was issued only every two weeks. The 
Synod desired to make it a weekly. The editor and publisher 
objected to this as then impossible for lack of support. A 
Pittsburgh elder offered to pay the loss if any. The Synod 
then resolved to make its issue weekly, and ordered its removal 
to Pittsburgh, with myself to be the editor and publisher. 

Thinking to do the nice thing with the former editor, who 
himself had once taken a short corner turn on Dr. J. H. Good, 
the originator of the paper, which was however trickily taken 
out of his hands, I proposed to let the paper continue from 
June to January as it had been, in order that its old business 
affairs might be properly closed up before making a forced 
change and removal. Instead of treating me fairly for this 
kindness, however, the paper was used in the meantime to 
stir up bitter opposition to the Synod's ordered change, and 
foment trouble throughout the West by publishing manufac- 
tured articles hostile to the said action. Party strife and nar- 
row sectional contentions as well as jealousy of the old order 
were engendered against the change to a weekly ; because, for- 
sooth, as it was argued, the price, $1.50, it could not be sent 
by mail for a year's subscription, etc. But any such party 
divisions and strife could prevent the paper's success. 

At best, the agitation made it bad for me to -assume the 
risky trust given by the Synod in the proposed untried ven- 
ture. Early in the fall of that year, therefore, my declination 
was sent to the Board of Publication; and the old editor had 
his cherished wish. At the next year's Synod, which happened 
to be held at Dayton itself, where I was elected president of 
that body, the whole disengenuous dealing of the opposition 
party was thoroughly ventilated and publicly exposed. For 
long years thereafter the scheming head wore a peculiar ex- 
pression of face whenever he was met and looked squarely 
in the eye. 

A few years later, about the time of the General Synod's 
meeting at Dayton, December, 1866, the Western Synod's 



i6o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Board of Publication transferred the paper to new hands, and 
it was then changed to "The Christian World." The tempo- 
rary new editor asked me to write incog, his principal editori- 
als for him till the following spring when the Ohio Synod was 
expected to elect him regular editor. This service for him 
was so acceptably and well done as he confessed in letters to 
me that his election was secured; and he made thankful ac- 
knowledgments which were the main thing to show for the 
favor done. He promised also to remunerate me well for my 
services, to pay for thus securing his election. 

The new editor published my articles furnished at his urgent 
request. They were put in as his own editorials. Soon after 
the General Synod's meeting in Dayton, he wrote December 13, 
1866, requesting a special editorial article also for New Year, 
and says, "I want you to Avrite on a motto for our Paper. The 
Latin, which I here quote from memory, as I have been de- 
prived of my minutes of General Synod of Pittsburgh. It is 
your report on State of the Church in which occurs In neces- 
sariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. You are 
acquainted with animus of the Latin, its place in theology, 
practical church life, and know how to adapt it to our western 
field. I want you to take it up and in a free way write about 
it editorially." . . . "If you come to my relief for a few num- 
bers of the paper, I will not only pay you, but throw a stone 
in your garden. Send the article on 'Motto' in good time." 
So he says, January 4: "I used your articles. I should have 
put your name to the New Year article, but a friend of the 
paper said I had better not — made it editorial. The subject re- 
quired something of the kind. I want you to appear on my 
first page as Our Own Contributor. . . . We can get you a 
title out here if managed rightly. Write me an easy western 
article which that cognomen would suit. . . . You know what 
would be for the advantage of our Western Zion." Later 
again: "All your matter made use of — rendered us service at 
the late meeting of Synod. It was felt by all to be about the 
proper ground to stand on for our whole western church, and 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



161 



it did much towards harmonizing Synod, and making my elec- 
tion secure." 

After this testimony in my favor, the matter might rest. But 
I must acknowledge as publicly the pay, for it all was two 
copies of Lange which had been sent for review notice in the 
World. Then he calls for articles of a "pious sort" on Easter. 
"One, Before Easter, then one on Easter communion itself, 
followed by the "After Communion article" and tells me of an- 
other of my articles in June that will cost $3.50 without being 
any gain to the general reader. "But then your pen is valuable 
in other directions, and I will cheerfully incur this expense." 
Requiescat. 

Some years subsequently, Dr. Mease became the editor of 
the World and he entered into diplomatic negotiations with me, 
proposing that we "join teams" in the editing and publishing 
the World. His approaches however were too cautious and he 
procrastinated till his embarrassing financial burdens fell disas- 
trously upon his plans. He was thus by western men forced 
out of the concern empty handed after all his service and 
losses. This ended my relation with the World, except as 
special occasional contributor in some of the after years. 

Another possible publishing interest was projected by me in 
1878. A missionary paper was thought necessary to arouse 
interest in that long slumbering cause. The President of the 
tri-Synodic Board gave commission to me as "the most fit 
man" for the work. A head piece was designed representing 
the angels bringing the good news of Gospel grace to the 
world ; then Christ the central figure giving commission to the 
disciples to "go preach the gospel." On the one extreme, the 
heathen world; on the right, Christian civilization, churches, 
schools, people going to service. The name was simply to be 
"Mission Tidings." This was a score of years, you will no- 
tice, the forerunner of the "Reformed Church Tidings/' which 
was born, lived briefly, and died of too much doctoring, in 
heavy editing. 

Our first number was nearly ready when word was sent out 



l62 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



that another paper, Dr, T. Appel's "Herald," had taken time by 
the forelock. Two such publications could not afford to run 
opposition in that cause. There was call for one, and only one 
good paper. But all other such efforts so far, not good, have 
failed. The mistakes of the past furnish lessons for guiding 
to future success, which is yet to come, but not by the "Bulle- 
tin," in its present form and methods. 

A sort of fascination seems to hang about the work and 
calling of editing and publishing. It has led many men to mis- 
take their calling. To become a success, there must be above 
all else, a divine gift for the vocation. It must have editorial 
fitness born in the man. Not one of a thousand adorns the 
place assigned to the conventional seat on the tripod. The 
"mystic stirring" of the blest afflatus may not always find fit 
oportunity to give the editor's powers free course to run and 
be glorified. My own call to the work, though repeatedly 
handicapped, was something more real surely than a dream. 
But my "calling and election" had little more than the aver- 
age success of the good practical common lot. It did not ever 
amount to distinguished leadership, though it sometimes point- 
ed and blazed the way for others and that was service useful 
to the general good; and for these "reformers before the re- 
formation" my disconnected record of piecemeal work will 
stand. No personal ambition was gratified by pressing myself 
to the front. 

My unofficial contributions to the church papers and periodi- 
cals seldom seemed to fall flat and still-born, as can be attest- 
ed by numerous letters of approval; and through the years 
they became enough to fill some volumes of miscellanies. Of 
books, my first was "The Ripe Harvest"; a call to fill the 
ranks of our ministry. It was a whole contribution given gra- 
tuitously to the Board of Publication without any reserve of 
author's copy money to myself. It soon ran through its first 
edition and was exhausted. Not having been stereotyped, it 
yet fully paid its way, but was not reprinted, and is not now 
extant. 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



163 



"Creed and Customs of the Reformed Church/' 1869, 
was a larger book, of which Dr. Nevin's favorable notice is 
preserved in preceding pages herein. Four editions were 
called for by the church, and the want is not yet filled. I paid 
for the copyright and electrotype plates. Only lately, repeated 
letters to* me ask for another edition. Rev. Dr. Rufus W. 
Miller says of it, May 4, 1901 : "I wish to express a debt of 
gratitude I owe to you personally. When I was a boy of 14 
or 15 and was confirmed in the old First Church, Easton, I 
found great help in your book "Creed and Customs," a copy of 
which was in our home. Through some public meetings I was 
greatly troubled as to the question of baptism and other views 
taught by Baptists and Methodists. Your book steadied me 
and threw light on what were then most vital subjects for de- 
cision, and concerning which my whole life has been affected." 
Similar testimony as to its usefulness to our people and min- 
istry was given in a recent letter from Elder Davis, of Balti- 
more, Rev. Mr. Noll, Mrs. Kunkel, etc. Others also have not 
forgotten it in the thirty odd years service since its first ap- 
pearance. 

A biography of Rev. Dr. N. P. Hacke, who for fifty- 
eight years was pastor at Greensburg, Pa., was prepared also 
by me at his request; and published by the Westmoreland 
Classis more than twenty-five years ago. It covers an interest- 
ing period of history in the Reformed Church in that part of 
western Pennsylvania, from 18 18 to 1878. The book has not 
had an extensive circulation; but contains valuable data. A 
memorial discourse at his death was published by me in the 
Review. 

"Jesus in the Home, Saving the Children, Gracious Nur- 
ture in the Family," is a later publication. It was prepared 
and published in my seventy-seventh year. Universal praise — 
except from the New Theology and Higher Critics — has come 
for it from all quarters in our Church and from without. It 
lives in foreign lands. In less than twelve- months, the first 
edition was exhausted. When the personal expense for its 



164 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



publication is re-imbursed to me from the sales, all the profits 
are pledged to go towards benevolent offerings. The Board is 
too poor to issue another edition now. It may be of interest 
to preserve some of the press notices in favor of "this invalu- 
able book," as one critic designates it. 

JESUS IN THE HOME. 

Saving the Children — Gracious Nurture in the Family, by Rev. Geo. 
B. Russell, A.M., D.D., LL.D. 

A book for Reformed people by a Reformed author. Written in a 
most interesting and direct style — such as will not tire the reader. As 
a help to parents, a benefit to children, an aid to the church, its aim is 
to glorify Christ. A reading of it will impress you with its value to 
all members of the home circle, to the Sunday-school, and to the 
Church. 

220 pages, 5% x 7%, superior paper, printed in large clear type and 
durably bound in neat silk grain and art vellum cloth. The price is 
seventy-five cents, postage paid, which shows that the book was not 
published for profit. What is realized out of its sale above cost will 
be devoted to benevolence. 

This is a practical book, written by a practical man, for practical 
people, foY the fathers, mothers and young people of the Reformed 
Church, and for all other Christian people, old and young. 

But of this idea of Christian nurture in the family, Dr. Russell is 
not only the defender and advocate, but he is also its prophet. 

Very foolish indeed are the parents and the ministers who do not 
make use of this God-ordained family order for the saving of our boys 
and girls. All this is set forth with vigor and clearness in Dr. Rus- 
sell's peculiar style. He talks to the people. He has something to say 
to them for their good. And he says it plainly and intelligently. 

This book will serve a good purpose if the pastor will see to it that 
it gets into the homes of the people. It will say for him some things 
he would like to say, but sometimes cannot. The book will be a good 
advocate and a wise counsellor. In it the parents are instructed and 
warned, and the children are counseled and cautioned. It should find 
its way into Reformed families and do much good. — Reformed Church 
Messenger. 

Dr. Russell has done the Church a real service in bringing out this 
volume. It is handsomely bound in cloth. It ought to find its way 
speedily into the homes of Reformed people. — Christian World. 

Dr. Russel deserves the thanks of the entire Reformed Church for 
the publication of this book. The writer remembers, when a boy, the 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



165 



profit derived from reading Creed and Customs written and published 
by Dr. Russell years ago. We are sure this book is just as timely, and 
will prove as helpful as was Creed and Customs. The subjects con- 
sidered are of great importance. The author in his Fore-word sug- 
gests that the chapters of the book be read repeatedly in the family, 
discussed in the home circle, in the Sunday-school, in the prayer meet- 
ing, and in the consistory. We trust this may be the case. Every 
chapter is written in a plain, readable style, and the points made and 
suggestions given are eminently practical. We heartily agree with the 
esteemed author in his emphasis upon the work of the family and the 
necessity for a revision of the proper sentiment and conviction in ref- 
erence to the place of the family in the plan of saving grace. We trust 
that the book will not only find its way into our Sunday-school librar- 
ies, but also into the hands of thousands of parents and teachers. — 
Heidelberg Teacher. 

Too much importance cannot be attached to the proper training of 
the young. Dr. G. B. Russell's latest work, on the above subject, em- 
phasizes the necessity for the Christian nurture of children based upon 
their covenant relation to God. This book contains both doctrinal 
teaching and practical counsels, and will be found useful in impress- 
ing parents with the heavy responsibility they bear toward God for 
the destiny of their offspring. — Reformed Church Record. 

This is an earnest and wise plea for definite and saving religious 
teaching and training in the home. Dr. Russell is in most hearty and 
intelligent sympathy with family religion and believes that children are 
to be fed the true bread of life and clothed with the atoning merits 
and positive righteousness of Jesus Christ. He treats his great sub- 
ject clearly, logically, sympathetically, convincingly. Would that such a 
book were in every household, and read, and its teaching practiced. — 
Christian Intelligencer. 

Dr. Russell's purpose, as stated by himself, is "to help parents; to 
benefit children and to glorify Christ." He has unbounded faith in 
household piety, piety of the Abrahamic order. — They have found the 
Saviour "in the home." The family was before the Church. The 
State as well as the Church rests upon it. Unless the home be per- 
meated by the power of a living Redeemer all other spiritual relations 
are comparatively ineffective. The facts are well stated, and not over 
stated. Its perusal will carry a large blessing with it. — Interior. 

A thoughtful, practical, helpful series of short chapters, which will 
commend themselves to all conscientious parents. — Outlook. 

The latest book issued by the Publication House is "Jesus in the 
Home : Saving the Children." We have not had time to read it through, 



i66 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



but what little we have read of it convinces us that it is a valuable 
book for the home, a book which consistories can and ought to com- 
mend to the families of their congregations. — Ed. Consistory. 

The book is written in the usually scholarly manner of the author 
and is instructive and entertaining and should find its way into all 
homes, especially where there are children to be trained for time and 
eternity. The book cannot but be a great help, to all who read it, to 
be more faithful to the "Trusteeship" which is placed upon them. The 
aim of the book is, To help parents, to benefit children, to aid the 
Church, and to glorify Christ. The author through this work has done 
a great service to the Church, and as the profits which may accrue 
therefrom, will be devoted to benevolent work, the Church will receive 
an additional benefit from a large circulation of this book. — Woman's 
Journal. 

EXTRACTS FROM REV. DR. A. S. WEBER'S NOTICE. 

The principles insisted on by Dr. Russell in this recently published 
volume on religion in the home, were they reduced as they should be 
to faithful practice in families, in Sunday-schools and classes prepar- 
ing for confirmation, would likewise result in lasting benefit to coming 
generations of Reformed Church people. 

My acquaintance with the author of this important and timely book, 
goes back now nearly twenty years. During one of my college-day 
vacations I happened to the town where he was then presiding over 
one of our literary institutions. A Sunday-school Convention was 
being held in the historic Reformed Church of the place, and Dr. Rus 
sell spoke on the general topic which in its various phases he has 
elaborated in the two hundred and twenty pages of this book. Of the 
address itself which he then made I recall very little, but the impres- 
sions made by the Doctor somehow have remained with me. He was 
a clear thinker, a forceful speaker, plain in his command of language, 
appreciative of the place of the Christian family in the scheme of re- 
demption, thoroughly in sympathy with and loyal to the teachings of 
the Heidelberg Catechism, which in a sense he regarded as "inspired." 

These first impressions have been confirmed and established by the 
privilege I have since had of hearing him, — only too seldom, — at 
Synodical meetings or commencement gatherings, of reading his con- 
tributions to our Church periodicals, and now particularly by this 
thoughtful and valuable exposition of the doctrine of Christian nur- 
ture. The book contains the ripe fruit of earnest study, wide observa- 
tion and rich personal experience, and its contents are offered in the 
clear, simple, straightforward style which is so needful when truth 



EDITING AND PUBLISHING. 



167 



is to be brought to the level of the various classes of readers for which 
such manuals are intended. 

In my humble judgment the title of the book, "Jesus in the Home," 
is not as happily appropriate as another that might have been chosen 
for it. The double sub-title, "Saving the Children — Gracious Nurture 
in the Family," may be indicative perhaps of the author's struggle to 
find just the name he himself wanted. To my mind the simple 
"Gracious Nurture in the Home," would have been sufficiently de- 
scriptive, and I am persuaded would have proved more attractive to 
many readers. This were indeed an insignificant matter to refer to, 
were it not for the fact that the name of the book has so much to do; 
but general assent must be given to the conviction it expresses, name- 
ly, that the Christian nurture in the family which is recommended, can- 
not but be a heavenly gain to parents and children. Recruits to the 
ranks of the evil one from among the children of the Church would be 
less numerous, and the Church itself would surely greatly multiply in 
numbers, piety and efficiency. 

For one I wish to thank Dr. Russell for this interesting, helpful and 
stimulating little book. I have written in order to commend it to the 
fathers and mothers of our Church as worthy not only of being pur- 
chased, but prayerfully read, and its precepts practiced. During the 
gift-giving season which is now approaching it would be difficult to 
select a book which would make a more appropriate present for mem- 
bers of the family, or friends outside our homes. A. S. W. 

Dec. 5, 1901. 

From Yochow, China, Missionary Rev. Dr. W. E. Hoy 
writes : "A friend sent us a copy of your new book, 'Jesus in 
the Home/ Mrs. Hoy and I have received so much profit from 
it that I feel constrained to write and thank you for giving the 
Church a work like this. It ought to be in every home and 
bear its message to parents. It will do a great deal of good, 
we are sure." The Christian Intelligencer gave it a second 
notice more highly honoring it than the first one from the 
same paper, as given above. Other favorable references from 
ministers and people also come as rewards for the work done 
here. An order just lately came from Birmingham, England. 

The book now in course of preparation is to be "Four Score 
and More," or, Memorabilia of Men and Things in my path- 
way from Four years old to the present time of writing. It. 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



will be my last book. A collection of miscellany from the 
church papers and periodicals would make by far the largest 
of all, and perhaps the most interesting, as it would refer to 
the living questions at issue occurring in our last fifty years 
of history. 




SILVER JUBILEE— WHOLE FAMILY. 



XII. 



In Allegheny. 



BOUT this time also may be mentioned a new piece of 



4 mission work on personal effort without church aid or 
appropriation for its support. Before the opening of the Ter- 
centenary year, a petition from twenty-six persons was sent 
to the Westmoreland classis, requesting that body to appoint 
me to hold religious services for them in Allegheny City. This 
was bitterly opposed before the Classis by Grace church's 
new pastor and the consistory. The opposition stood in the 
main on the ground that the signers were too poor to start a 
new congregation. The Pittsburgh mission at the first itself, 
it should be remembered, was indeed not rich when originally 
projected; poorer in fact, than this, and with some aid had in 
four years become self-supporting. But this proposed interest 
must begin without any missionary help. To be free to do this 
after the permission was refused, there came my dismission 
from the Westmoreland Classis, then asked for in order to 
connect with the St. Paul Classis within whose bounds Alle- 
gheny City in fact was located, the river being the boundary. 
The above petition was then sent to the latter classis, and no 
one from the city followed it to push the consideration of its 
request. But Grace church went after it in stern remonstrance 
and Dr. Callender was their appointed representative. We, 
however purposely left all in the Lord's hands. 

After a full debate the request of the petitioners was grant- 
ed. Accordingly in January, 1863, the Tercentenary year, the 
first service for these people was held in Sidden's Hall, above 
a beer saloon on Rebecca street. Thereafter soon a better place 
was fitted up on the third story of a hall, corner of Sandusky 
and Leacock streets. Still later, Quincy Hall below Federal 
street was rented. The Sunday-school and the public attend- 
ance began to grow. A congregation was organized with 
twenty-two members. Elders George Reiter and D. S. Dief- 




FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



fenbacher, Deacons Lewis Moore and Thomas Baetty. Not a 
dollar of missionary aid was ever given or asked for; so these 
people, judged to be "too poor," started by self-sacrifice as en- 
tirely self-supporting. The pastor had no salary promised him ; 
all expenses of rent, gas, fuel, sexton and tax left about seventy 
dollars the first year for his support. The second year's growth 
brought a salary up to nearly three hundred dollars ; the third 
year, to about five hundred, and at the end of the fifth year, 
the salary voted was eight hundred dollars. All this under the 
hindrance of very stout opposition and violent persecution 
from Grace church on the Pittsburgh side. After my removal 
soon thereafter at the call of the Synod, to do editorial work in 
the east, the continued hostility from the other church across 
the river literally killed the promising church in Allegheny. 
That was the return made by Grace church for the thousands 
of aid it received from the east in the days of its own weakness 
by my personal efforts, soliciting and canvassing. But wisdom 
is justified of its children. Here is a part of it, as the sad his- 
tory developed. 

In course of no very long time these on the Allegheny side 
had begun to talk about a church for themselves. The mem- 
bership in net gain before my removal east had come to be 
eighty-nine communicants. A most eligible lot, fronting sev- 
enty-five feet on Marion avenue facing West Commons, below 
Ridge avenue, had been bought and payment in full provided. 
A brewery company, very soon after we had secured it, offered 
to pay us a good advance for that lot, now probably worth 
$30,000 or more. A plan for the new church was drawn and 
about $6000 subscribed towards the building of the edifice. 
Everything before I was called away, was in a promising stage 
of active progress. A devoted people were at work. The 
pastor previously had declined a call to Philadelphia to take 
charge of the proposed mission, now Trinity church, at an ad- 
vance of four hundred dollars in salary. 

But then came soon also to the pastor an election and a call 
from the Eastern Synod to be book editor in the Messenger 



IN ALLEGHENY. 



office. This was pressed upon him by many esteemed personal 
advisers ; and finally he reluctantly accepted the overture, and 
left Allegheny, much to the regret of the people (and soon af- 
terwards also to the regret of himself). But Rev. W. E. 
Krebs was chosen his successor, and the people felt able with 
the offer of fifty dollars aid from myself, to pay him $1100 
salary. This seemed to promise sure success to the Allegheny 
church. No dollar of missionary aid was ever given towards 
the support of that self-helpful Allegheny interest. But alas ! 
almost as rapidly as it had grown, it went backwards to a 
final dissolution in not many years thereafter ; and years of 
subsequent troubled history, under the administration of a 
new pastor. Instead of the proposed new church as projected, 
upon the finely located lot, a little frame chapel was built, then 
changed, and then rebuilt, at losses and dissatisfaction in end- 
less chapter. Jangling troubles were engendered; a bitter 
quarrel about the place of the altar broke out between the 
pastor who had one elder on his side, and all the other seven 
members of the consistory, three elders and four deacons, on 
the other side. Finally the majority party of the consistory 
privately carried the main bone of contention, the elevated 
altar, into the basement Sunday-school room. The preacher 
the next Sunday morning sat for a while dumb before a full 
audience, and then positively refused to exercise his ministry 
unless the altar be at once restored to the place where he had 
without authority offensively placed it. Neither party yield- 
ing, he refused to preach and resigned. He then issued dismis- 
sions, on his own motion, to all who consented to receive them 
in order to join church elsewhere. Twenty-six went over to 
Grace church, by partisan persuasion. 

Everything fell into irretrievable confusion in the congrega- 
tion. A considerable number of the members being new in 
Reformed church life, were yet unsettled as to its usages, cus- 
toms and history ; and they were helpless for any proper rem- 
edy in the disheartening trouble. It is altogether too sad and 
tangled a story to be fully told here in detail. 
R-13 



172 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



The next pastor succeeding him, who had torn to fragments 
the promising little congregation, for a while rallied a part of 
the disintegrated membership. They continued the pastor's 
salary at eleven hundred dollars, and besides furnished coal 
for the pastor's family use at a cost of about one hundred 
more. But only slow and small increase came to the member- 
ship now under inefficient pastoral attention. Confidence and 
hope gradually failed. The leading shepherd apparently lost 
his hold and grip. Then the salary promised could no longer 
be paid from the scantier grown pew rent income, and some 
of the zealous supporters had to pay for a while from one to 
two hundred dollars each. Then came increasing debt, grow- 
ing steadily heavier, until it became in a few years too oppres- 
sive. Relief from this was sought in a request for a dissolution 
of the pastoral relation which was strongly urged until it be- 
came a fretting irritation, and that friction cost also some loss 
of membership. 

Another pastor who followed still more signally failed to 
unite the people, shattered to a non-working unity in the 
congregation. His pulpit efforts were a fair success, but he 
did not use the requisite pastoral tact to animate and unite the 
members. Growing indebtedness, losses, removals, and con- 
tinued hostility from the Pittsburgh side finally disheartened 
the few remaining workers. All ended at last in swamping 
the whole property and sending the suffering people to the four 
winds. Much of this disaster to what was once so promising 
a church came, if not directly from Grace church people, then 
certainly from their lack of Christian sympathy and help for 
what would otherwise have been for the general good of the 
Reformed church in those great cities. Thankfulness or com- 
mon gratitude from the Pittsburgh church for what had been 
done for it in its early days, was not shown in favor of the 
Reformed population on the other side of the river. The now 
wealthy congregation which owes its own existence to general 
church aid given at its beginning, collected by its first pastor, 
might have returned much to the Reformed cause if it had 



IN ALLEGHENY. 173 

saved the early church interest in Allegheny of nearly forty 
years ago. Its liberality to foreign missions does not atone its 
opposition. Its first church property, secured without any cost 
to its membership, and sold for $50,000 cash, to enable it to 
provide for its proud $100,000 fine property, so beautiful and 
glorious, goes into the record. 

UNION OF REFORMED. 

In every right way the earnest desire for "Union" is held 
in high regard. It is proper therefore to record the following 
action unanimously adopted by the Potomac Synod, in 1906, 
when the concordat was dissolved and our Reformed people 
of France were left as untrained orphans to mark out a new 
experience without Synodical traditions and fraternal help. We 
have the first right to them and they to us. Others will soon 
try to adopt them into fraternal relations not so near; as they 
are working to do with the Hungarians whom we first discov- 
ered and organized into Reformed churches in this land. Sev- 
eral millions of these Reformed Christians are objects of con- 
sideration now by other denominations seeking to swallow all 
into one great partisan union like the Pan-Presbyterians who 
always forget that Reformed is the generic name for the 
whole family. 

GREETINGS TO THE REFORMED CHURCH IN FRANCE. 

The following resolutions, proposed by the Rev. Geo. B. 
Russell, D.D., LL.D., were adopted : 

Whereas, Our brethren of the Reformed faith in France are now 
passing through new experience of freedom from State control, inci- 
dent to their relations hitherto holding between Church and State, un- 
der the civil government in the French Republic ; and, inasmuch as we 
of the Reformed Church in the United States have long enjoyed un- 
trammeled liberty of self-government and are reaping the largest bene- 
fits in the exercise of free Protestant rights, subject only to the laws 
of the land; therefore, 

Resolved, That this Synod of the Potomac of our Reformed Church 
in the United States hereby expresses its lively sympathy in fraternal 
Christian fellowship for our brethren of the old Protestant faith in 



174 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

France, and extend to them the warm right hand of brotherhood in 
their new trials of faith and sufferings in the cause of truth and right- 
eousness for the sake of our common Lord and Saviour in behalf of 
our fellowmen. 

Resolved, also, That an authentic copy of this expression of our 
Christian greetings be transmitted to the proper Synod of the Reform- 
ed Church in that Republic; and that our brethren of the Reformed 
Church of France be respectfully overtured, through the General 
Synod, to join us in closer relations belonging to the historical con- 
fessional bond common to the Reformed family, by entering into an 
exchange of corresponding delegates with our General Synod, begin- 
ning, if possible, with the next triennial meeting in May, 1908. 

Resolved, That a commission of one member be appointed by this 
Synod to co-operate with one of the General Synod in furthering such 
closer relations of amity and fraternity between the Reformed churches 
holding so much in common, faith, suffering and history. (See 
Minutes.) 

The spiritual cry for "Union" is abroad in the land. Songs, 
prayers, labors, schemes, conferences are affecting the churches 
on many sides. Union they predict is coming with a force to 
carry all before it, break down every party barrier and sweep 
the denominations all into one. That is very devout and 
enough to rejoice all hearts. But it is still future. 

The unity of the church is yet to come. It is a futurity of 
the Christian confession. That they all may be one. It is an 
article of the Creed ; that is, it is for faith of what is to come, 
not yet present in sight. Holiness is also predicted in the same 
sense for the church of the Creed, but it is not as yet actualized, 
without spot, or wrinkle, or blemish or any such thing. It is 
a rather singular fact that the most pious and loudest shouters 
for union on any terms, at any price, in any form, have so 
little conception of what the unity of the Creed really means. 
What do they want? They do not know or care. Must it be 
organic, or federal, or conglomerate, or nominal, or mystical, 
or invisible? Settle that once and it will abate much of the 
noisy enthusiasm. The Master asked the blind man, What wilt 
thou that I should do unto thee? He did not exactly know, 
but only he wished to be able to see the light. 



IN ALLEGHENY. 



175 



That condition settled will indeed be much for union. Till 
then the church must wait and pray and labor to become one. 
It will be one as Christ is one. In Him the conditions must be 
prepared and perfected, until they all come in the unity of the 
Spirit into the completeness of Christ. To expect union in any 
other sense is a false and vain heresy. No one can make a true 
union out of a mere negative clothed in resolutions. Though 
it may sum up millions in schedules and lists it is all bosh and 
will not have the living power of union except in Christ; not 
as compromise, creed or no creed, not as hair-splitting between 
essential and non essential gospel truth as it is in Jesus. For 
long to come there will likely be found more real Christian 
union in the historical denominations than in renegate univer- 
sal assemblies. Find out what union means. Set it out in 
honest form — then move on the sectarian works. Try any plan 
that is good. Begin with the Creed. 

The whirlwind dust of Rev. Dr. W. H. Roberts' efforts to 
consolidate the general union movement into Pan-Presbyteri- 
anism, when it settles, will likely show nothing of union except 
the conglomerate list of names aggregating the big millions in 
the religious denominations intended to be piously swallowed. 
His assistant trumpeters in our own and the other churches will 
find their labors lost and their occupation gone, when once the 
sober second thought gets at the real emptiness, not the pious 
oneness, of the undefined union that contained nothing real of 
Christ or Church on which to unite, but only the grand parade 
of great numbers, running into millions. Like the heralded 
union of the Congregationalists, the United Brethren and the 
Methodist Protestants, each remaining as ununited as they 
severally were before the pious transaction of their nominal 
union. 



XIII. 



The St. Paul's Orphans' Home 

the st. Paul's orphan home — its property purchase. 

T N 1866, while yet living in Allegheny, and a member of the 
St. Paul classis, the Rev. C. A. Limberg, Butler, Pa., wrote 
me that the fine property of Christian Siebert, located there was 
about to be sold. It had formerly been the home of the late 
General McCall, of the Pennsylvania Reserves in the war for 
the Union. We two had once together looked over the prop- 
erty in a general way, as possibly suitable for an orphan home, 
about which there had been some talk between us since the 
General Synod three years before at Pittsburgh. The orphan 
cause was at that meeting reported on by me to the General 
Synod as a worthy object for church work hitherto not in 
hand. A general board was then appointed to further the 
cause. Being secretary of said Board, its possible work was 
often discussed between myself and other members of our 
Classis as a western Pennsylvania project. It was proper there- 
fore to think of possibilities and take advantage of near op- 
portunities. 

No plan however had as yet been settled upon or taken even 
an ideal form. In fact there were no material means at hand, 
and no voice of local church authority gave impetus to such a 
purpose as the founding of an orphan home in our section. 
But here was a providence. Rev. Mr. Limberg, of blessed 
memory, honored by his family and the church, had bought 
part of the McCall farm from Mr. Siebert, and saw that what 
was left of the property, including the main building, was de- 
sirable for such a home. And now it was likely to pass beyond 
our reach to another party from Ohio, with a view, it was said, 
of locating there a seminary. The bargain and transaction final- 
ly for its sale was then in hand and might soon be closed in fa- 
vor of the Ohio party. On my way home from a spring meeting 



THE ST. PAUI/S ORPHANS'' HOME. 



177 



of the classis, and while spending a day at the parson's place we 
had examined again the property with him more particularly 
and discussed the fitness for a home — also the seeming im- 
possibility of securing it, without having a dollar of means in 
sight for a church institution for orphans. 

If anything was to be done, however, for obtaining it, no 
time dared now be lost ; and to let it slip from our near grasp 
at that time, no such favorable place would soon be found. 
The party negotiating, we were told, offered $9000 for the 
buildings and thirty acres of land. Now or never for us. The 
oil fever had not yet broken out at Butler and property was low 
in price. After my return to Allegheny, came a letter, saying 
that a few days would decide or lose for us the opportunity. 
By telegraph my order after consulting my wife and prayerful 
thought was to "buy it now!" My proposed conditions offered 
by letter following the same day, were to get Elder Siebert to 
agree to give us off the purchase price a personal subscription 
from himself of $1000 towards the proposed home. We had 
as yet absolutely no money for the purchase, not even a small 
sum to bind the bargain. A reduction was requested from 
the offer said to have been made by another party; and Elder 
Siebert mistook my proposition to mean that he contribute 
another $1000 towards our price named. To this he kindly 
consented. By the misunderstanding of himself and Rev. Mr. 
Limberg, my offer was taken to make a difference of $2000; 
and this fact is therefore probably the ground for the oft re- 
peated and officially published incorrect statement that the 
Rev. Mr. Limlberg Obtained a promise of $2000 on which he 
then bought the home. The historical fact is that my offer to 
Elder Siebert was $8000, of which he was to subscribe $1000, 
as a donation in making the property over to our church for 
an orphan home. The wrong impression has been given out 
on mistaken inference that Rev. Mr. Limberg bought the home. 
That is only true in so far as he being at Butler acted as the 
mouthpiece or active agent in the transaction of the purchase 
by telegram in my personal proposal to buy the property. 



178 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



So far our rash venture seemed to prosper. My wife strong- 
ly advised me to make the telegraphic offer, the only way to 
meet the case on which the place was thus bought entirely 
on faith. Then we began to contrive ways and means and to 
consult others for acquiescence and co-operation ; which re- 
sulted in material aid for securing the magnificent St. Paul's 
Orphan Home at Butler, Pa. 

Being then secretary of the General Synod's Board of Or- 
phan Homes, it was within my knowledge that some subscrip- 
tions as Tercentenary offerings had been promised to the gen- 
eral cause by members of our Board. This was of course not 
yet available for the present purchase. While therefore Elder 
Siebert assented and agreed to my offer as above detailed, it 
was bought on my sole responsibility with an entirely empty 
hand. The late superintendent of the home asked me recently 
where the money came from, "as they had no record to show" 
how it was bought and they had guessed wildly. 

Here is his letter to me: 

Dr. G. B. Russell. 

My Dear Brother : I am glad I struck somebody who knows all 
about the founding of our Home. Hitherto, I was dependent for all 
information upon Father Limberg, and it seems he did not know or 
care to tell me everything. I often wondered where the money came 
from that paid for the property. I knew Mr. Schmertz and Mr. Siebert 
each gave $1,000, and that a part was made from the support of soldiers' 
orphans. Now, will you please, while you are yet living (you cannot 
do it after death) write out a full sketch or history of its founding for 
my "Orphans' Friend." * * * Please do it for the sake of the Home 
itself, as well as for my own sake. By so doing you will confer a great 
favor upon us all. 

I have read your book with much interest and regard it as the book 
for the times. 

Please scratch off a small article on Easter, such as would interest 
children, for my March number of "The Orphans' Friend." Let me 
have it next week. 

Yours fraternally, 



the st. paul's orphans' home. 



179 



Here is the way it began. Rev. Dr. J. W. Nevin, President 
of our General Synod Board, designated at my request his 
$500 Tercentenary subscription made for the general cause, 
toward this particular purchase. A like application from me 
secured from Elder W. E. Schmertz the same direction of his 
$500 Tercentenary subscription to our Board's treasury (not 
$1000 then as Dr. Prugh mentions). Another request was 
made of an elder for his intended offering of a like sum. The 
pastor of Grace church secured $1500 from public spirited 
Christians in the city not of our church, and what was raised by 
myself on the Allegheny side, together with the $1000 re- 
mitted by Mr. Siebert or subscribed by him, enabled me to 
take receipt from him April 1st, 1867, for the payment of Four 
thousand five hundred dollars, in part for the "buildings and 
thirty acres of ground," now the orphan home property, leav- 
ing then, as the said paper mentions in particular, $3500 to be 
paid at some future unnamed date. That settles the question 
of original price. Here is a copy of the receipt securing a full 
title for the property, which should put to rest all uncertain 
statements, viz: 

"Received, Pittsburgh, Pa., April 1st, 1867, of W. E. 
Schmertz and Geo. B. Russell, Four Thousand Five Hundred 
Dollars ($4,500), in part payment for the purchase of my 
property adjoining the town of Butler, Pa., consisting of the 
main buildings, the mansion house, two-story brick 54 x 54 
feet, and back building, brick barn and other outhouses and 
thirty acres of land, etc., (for which eight thousand dollars 
in all is to be paid including the sum herein receipted for). 
And the undersigned hereby binds himself, his heirs and as- 
signs to convey the said property by a good and sufficient deed, 
to such Board of Trustees, or other party hereafter to be 
designated by said Schmertz and Russell 

(Signed) Christian Siebert." 

Mr. Schmertz's name was only used in the receipt here for 
ornament and to give some semblance of financial basis for 



i8o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the transaction, but otherwise had nothing to do with it ; it was 
alone and entirely a contract and payment between Mr. Siebert 
and myself. We met on the pavement and concluded the con- 
tract on Wood street, Pittsburgh. By personal formal stipula- 
tion I no longer acted in the Board or on committees so as not 
to seem making a place for myself as some supposed. 

The General Synod Board had previously voted $400 to the 
Eastern or Bridesburg Home in Philadelphia, for internal use 
and $1000 for payment on the debt made by its superintendent 
for its property bought, before it became the Bethany Home, 
later removed to Womelsdorf, Pa. Rev. Dr. Zacharias had 
asked for authority from our Board to establish an orphan 
home at Frederick, Md., for which he had, as then reported 
$2000 in sight for some such object. In the fall of 1864 he in- 
vited me to preach there for him to his people, which I did, in 
the interest of his orphan home project. And in December, 
1870, or 187 1, as far as I can now recall, from information then 
received, when editor of the Messenger, I wrote an editorial 

article (see previous page No. ) for that paper announcing 

that such a Christian charity had been established ; in which pa- 
per is mentioned that a board of trustees had been appointed 
with their names given, and further informing our Reformed 
peopl that a suitable property had been secured adjoining the 
church in Frederick, Md., and also a lot bought nearby for 
needed enlargement. What else was done, or not done, and how 
the project failed to become a fact accomplished, has not been 
made public. But that editorial was taken by the parties in 
interest as stating correctly the main facts. 

Well, without getting authority from the General Board ex- 
cept acting at our suggestion and approved by other friends, 
Rev. Mr. Limberg opened the home as the appointed superin- 
tendent on November 29, 1867, with a few orphans. The Lord 
knows the weight of his burden, and labor of his family. Mrs. 
George Reiter, of the Allegheny City church, collected and sent 
in the first considerable supply of clothing and a good lot of 
bedding material in webs of muslin, calicoes and comforters 



the st. Paul's orphans' home. 181 

contributed from merchants and others, for furnishing some 
of the rooms ; and she also repeated such similar contribution 
for some succeeding years, before the home had called out 
many other friends. The St. Paul's Classis appointed later a 
committee to hold in trust the purchased property and to take 
such action as might be needed to open and operate the home. 
Geo. B. Russell, C. A. Limberg, D. S. Dieffenbacher and 
George Voegtley, were that committee. Its first meeting was 
held at my house in Allegheny in October of that year. 

The dedicatory services, at which it was my privilege to 
preside, and duty to deliver the special address, were held in 
the home at Butler, December ioth, 1867. It was also made 
my duty to prepare the charter and have it enacted by applying 
in person to the State legislature, through the kindness of my 
friend, Senator Graham ; and the act incorporating the institu- 
tion during my presence became a law in due course. Gover- 
nor Hartranft, my college friend, then Auditor General, sent 
me the officially sealed copy, the transcript for which cost me 
personally $22 ; besides the expense of trip to Harrisburg. The 
same duty was also done by me for the incorporation of the 
General Synod's Board; which was pronounced "a most com- 
prehensive and liberal instrument." It was unanimously ap- 
proved by the General Synod at Dayton, Ohio, 1866. But by 
an oversight was not ordered to be printed in full in the min- 
utes until at its second meeting thirty years after, 1896, at the 
same place. 

After the purchase and formal inauguration of the St. Paul's 
Home, the Clarion and Westmoreland Classes were invited to 
join in the ownership and management of the same. This was 
the first they had to do with it, not as elsewhere reported that 
the Classes bought the home, which by the official Souvenir 
makes me pastor of Grace church, five years out of correct 
date. The same bungles the reported $1000 dollar contribu- 
tions provided by me for the purchase of the property ; nor did 
the Classes singly or jointly ever buy the property. They 
simply took over the property on the title ordered from my 



182 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



hands. This was long after its purchase by me on faith by a 
personal deal. It seems next to impossible to convince the 
authorities of the facts and correct statements as to the how 
and by whom the home was bought. 

Many good friends have been raised up and engaged heart 
and soul in carrying on this Christian work. Loving gifts of 
money and materials, acts of humble and unseen charity for 
the sake of the Lord's little ones, and prayers along with good 
works have been offered on the altar, whose incense continues 
perennially to ascend to the Father. Let the Master ever 
favor this home, where Christian nurture with care and mate- 
rial support provides for the helpless. This whole cause lies 
very near to the hearts of our Reformed people. No other 
benevolence calls out more readily the alms of the Church than 
the support of the orphans. The General Synod Board does 
not, as was publicly charged in debate at the last Tiffin General 
Synod in the least hamper or hinder local homes under their 
own auxiliary Boards ; but leaves them free in their own affairs 
as to them seems best. The original purchase investment here 
made possible the increased value for which the home was 
lately sold. With no vanity it may be said, the early acts of 
faith gave us what is now held and cherished for the praise and 
glory of the Lord. 

As belonging here, the Dedicatory Address is allowed to 
take its place in this part of the narrative : 

Address delivered at the dedication and formal opening of the St. 
Paul Orphans' Home, Butler, Pa., December 10, 1867, by Rev. G. B. 
Russell, Secretary of General Synod Orphans' Home Board : 

Dearly Beloved : This Orphans' Home has been provided by the 
pious purpose of Christ's disciples in the Reformed Church, in the name 
of our blessed Lord, in obedience to the Great Shepherd's divine com- 
mand, "Feed my lambs." It is therefore above all to be a Christian 
home with all its blessed nurture for destitute orphans. The disciples 
of Christ must ever keep in mind that they have by His sacred legacy 
the poor always with them ; and that to do these kind acts of service in 
His name is the same as if that were done directly unto Him — a most 
real way of proving our love to our dear Redeemer. 



the st. paul's orphans' home. 



183 



Nothing that we can do is worth the doing, unless the act have in it 
this first and most necessary element of true charity, for love is always 
the core of Christianity, and the principle from which it springs. Chris- 
tian charity is the highest and noblest motive in man's good works, 
which shall have their reward when done in faith, though the reward 
itself be "not of merit, but of grace." 

In founding, therefore, this our Orphans' Home, the main regard 
was of course had to this cardinal principle of our holy religion. Not 
only in this home's first inception, but this is also to be kept in view in 
all its subsequent management, in its general government, in its daily 
teachings, in its moral training and in the atmosphere of its whole 
religious cult, it is designed to be ruled at every point and turn by the 
living power of true Christianity. 

We have a right then to expect — and we therefore pledge this much 
in its behalf in advance — that it will always be more in this regard than 
a mere humanitarian interest of similar name, growing somewhat com- 
mon of late years in our land, where no distinctive creed, no positive 
religious spirit, no Christian faith is in any proper form owned and 
confessed. The grand old truth, the Creed of Christendom, "the 
apostles' doctrine and fellowship," is not cherished and honored, alas ! 
as it should be in many of our popular benevolent institutions of this 
kind. This fact alone, sad as it surely is, of itself is enough, no matter 
what other provisions be at hand or lacking to forfeit in any case our 
Christian respect and confidence in all such institutions. 

Because of its ground principle thus resting in positive truth and 
the Christian faith, this institution here is not however to become nar- 
row in its plans nor bigoted in spirit, nor of low sectarian character. 
On this very account, rather, no such mean and false conception of its 
true mission ought ever to obtain as respects this Home for orphans. 
The widest Catholicity must ever characterize its genius and life, if it is 
in any true measure to fulfill its high calling of large-hearted Chris- 
tian benevolence. Starting from this point and acting from the broad 
view afforded by this general conception of its vocation as a Christian 
institution, its doors are to be open wide alike to all orphans, no matter 
what may have been the religion, or the creed, or profession of their 
parents. First, however, only to those of the household of faith — then 
as far as able aiding all destitute orphan children who shall here need 
kindness and philanthropic help. 

This whole project is moreover a noble work of faith. This beauti- 
ful home, unlike many others, has no endowment to start with, no 
settled State patronage, no previously provided revenue from which to 
meet the steady outlay and oft-repeated demands for money in the 



1*4 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



multiplying wants of the home. Its daily ministrations to the neces- 
sities of orphans, whom God may send here to be fed and clothed and 
educated, and in a true Christian sense nurtured for the Lord, will de- 
pend, like the birds that have neither storehouse nor barn, on the never- 
failing providence of our heavenly Father who "feedeth them." Its 
managers only rest for help on the faithful promises of the Father of 
fatherless and the God of the orphan. He has left of His own rich 
stores sufficient means to this end in the hands of stewards among His 
followers in the church. At His command the needed supply will be 
forthcoming in due time, answering the orphans' prayer to "Our 
Father" for daily bread, even manna if it be required. There was not 
a dollar in hand for its first purchase. 

May we not then commend this home with all its claims, not only to 
the Reformed Church more particularly, but in a wider sense and more 
general way to the whole affluent community in the midst of which it is 
founded? Take it to your hearts, all good people, and cherish it for 
the love of Christ, in whose cause it is designed to find place. Make 
its ministrations a double blessing in deed ; for both the giver, and re- 
ceiver are blessed. Yea, you may learn by experience that it is "more 
blessed to give than to receive." 

Moved by the faith of our holy religion, and having inaugurated 
sacredly this Christian institution on such basis as we have indicated 
and enunciated, we do now proceed by appointment of the proper 
authorities to dedicate this Home to its intended use, and set it apart 
to the service of the orphan cause. 

This institution of the Reformed Church is henceforth to be known 
as "The Saint Paul Orphans' Home." 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, we do now hereby 
solemnly set it apart and dedicate it to the sacred use to which, by the 
authority of those in the church who have assumed the responsible man- 
agement of this institution, it is thereby appointed. 

Fulfil here Thy promise in behalf of the orphan, O Thou God of the 
fatherless, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the ad- 
ministrations of the Holy Spirit in this institution of Thy Church ; and 
accept now this offering at our hands ; and consecrate this Hume with 
Thy divine benediction ! Crown its efforts for good in Thy name with 
abundant prosperity and success, so long as it shall minister to Thy 
glory and to the welfare of our fellow men — in Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen ! 

A somewhat similar address was delivered by me at Wom- 
elsdorf when Rev. D. Y. Heisler was inaugurated Superin- 



the st. paul's orphans' home. 185 

tendent and the keys of that institution were turned over to 
him at the time when the Bethany Orphans' Home was formal- 
ly opened at its new location after it had been removed from 
Bridesburg, and its name changed from "The Shepherd of the 
Lambs" to that which it now bears. Because of my official 
place as secretary of the General Synod's Board, is no doubt 
the main reason why the friends called on me for these ser- 
vices on the interesting occasions. 



XIV. 



At Philadelphia 

l\yT Y election by the Eastern Synod, October, 1867, as Book 
Editor in the publication office, as has been elsewhere 
stated, took me from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. According 
to Dr. Fisher's notion, this was mainly at first to collect funds 
for the Messenger office. No Book Editor or any other kind 
in that — only an agency. This work kept me for more than a 
year on the outside of the establishment. It was not Synod's 
main plan, nor my view, when accepting the office. Money 
was indeed required for the printing concern, and it was handy, 
in the name of the Publication Board acting for the Synod to 
send a solicitor to the churches to secure and collect needed 
funds to pay the old debts. These efforts made in good faith 
by the new official for a while, in a little more than a year 
summed up over eight thousand dollars in cash and notes. 
Place was soon found for it all, but the main part was appro- 
priated to meet old scores as fast as it came in ; so that from 
the proceeds, the Book Editor could only publish a few less 
than a score, Sunday-school books. What became of the bal- 
ance in the treasurer's hands was not for me to know or ques- 
tion. As had been the case in years before, there was an "old 
sinkhole" swallowing up in annual deficiency, the incoming 
cash from subscriptions and books while what was called as- 
sets only seemed to grow. Once this was reported as high as 
$65,000; then $42,000 and lastly $00. The net balance of the 
publication affairs was perhaps for many years mostly on the 
wrong side of the ledger, running towards final bankruptcy of 
the concern ; notwithstanding the fact that the State relief for 
the loss by fire at Chambersburg covered the main damage done 
by the Confederates. Dr. Bausman had also secured some 
fifteen thousand dollars by special subscriptions from liberal 
friends soon after the burning. The old Nestor of the Publica- 



AT PHILADELPHIA. 



187 



tion Board managed all the finances, and of course gave a full 
report every year as to growing debts which found always 
need and call for more money for the big salaries. The book 
editing scheme therefore did not naturally develop enough suc- 
cess to run the whole sinking establishment ! Some of the peri- 
odicals, especially the Messenger, the Review and the Kirchen 
Zeitung at that time were not meeting the expense of their pub- 
lication. 

Then the Board, to effect a change of operations elected me 
as one of the editors of the Messenger, equal in place with the 
old editor, the two names published together; but the senior 
managed nevertheless to treat me generally as a mere negative 
quantity. It was from first to last an irksome place ; for it was 
found not possible to have in it free activity enough as was 
generally desired to meet the responsibilities in the control of 
the paper or change any thing for the better ; for much of this 
the church at large, without full knowledge of the internal dif- 
ficult relations, naturally held me at least in equal part account- 
able. The circulation of the paper did in fact run up in a short 
time by personal effort, from less than 4000 to more than 5500; 
and religious exchanges began to find in the paper articles 
which they saw fit to transfer to their columns. Some of the new 
editorials gave rising hope and more confidence also in medi- 
ating the controversial issues. The advertising income too, as 
well as the increase from subscriptions, began to relieve some- 
what the financial pressure. But all this tended to make the 
former management jealous. This wrought at many points 
against my work. 

There could be no two firsts, and even two equal heads often 
unconsciously collided. Which one was to play second fiddle 
in every part was the vexing problem. The old editor had held 
the lines for nearly forty years. It was not expected that he 
should give over any of his long cherished notions of safe 
charioteering. His style of steadiness, self-confidence, dogged- 
ness, perseverance in stereotyped modes, and his indefatigable 
powers of endurance, as well as his tried experience in old time 
R-14 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



business tact, in all honest exercise of charitable allowance- 
all this had been of great value in former trying times for the 
trusty management of the publication affairs. But the times 
and circumstances had changed ; so that the condition of the in- 
terests here involved which had outgrown the past was differ- 
ent — all of which had advanced beyond his antique settled in- 
flexible methods. Without any discredit to him for what he 
had been, something else was now required to be tried. Many 
practical calls came for change and living progress. 

Dr. Harbaugh, it was first thought by many, should have 
taken the editorship of the church paper. But the Synod had 
just put him into the theological professorship in the seminary 
at Mercersburg. He and others had repeatedly spoken to me 
as a possible new working element in the Messenger affairs. 
Uniformly I had however in effect said: "Dr. Fisher deserves 
well for what he has done and even for what he yet is ; he 
should therefore not be pushed entirely aside without some 
proper understanding previously with himself." 

When the Synod then by its Board elected me one of the ed- 
itors, it was not only with his full consent and approbation but 
merely as he understood the proposed relation to be intended. 
He heralded the appointment in a special editorial in the Mes- 
senger. And this was without any consultation with me be- 
forehand by either himself or the Board. He had in fact 
though made some favorable tests of me before. And now so 
long as he had been able to keep me in the field securing the 
much needed funds to oil up the sometimes squeaking machin- 
ery for running the office, all went well enough as between us. 
During his former management, however, time and again the 
gearing had run dry and required similar relief. 

But in any change as to editing he would brook no full equal, 
much less a possible rival or free partner in managing the af- 
fairs of the office. His place must always be above all. It 
would be an insult instantly resentable to suggest improve- 
ments on his methods and ways. Ail else from whatever quar- 
ter proposed, or by whomsoever even hinted at, if it contra- 



AT PHILADELPHIA. 



vened his hard set will was to be subordinated absolutely, just 
as was his clerk in the store and his brother the confidential 
bookkeeper at the office desk. Another editor put in trust was 
not to be a mere machine ; and in fact was not called by 
the Synod from a successful pastorate to this office only to let 
it stagnate continuously and make no sign. The case demand- 
ed something, especially a new power was intended to modify 
and advance on the long time cast-iron method, to modify 
which the change was made. It was plainly my duty to do 
something positive or quit. It was not pleasant, however, to 
be used as a wedge driven in to split the old condition into 
opposing parts. 

Just at the point where matters had come to such a posture, 
my brother, Rev. C. Russell, came to our house sick ; and the 
disease proved to be small pox — ending on the ninth day in 
his death. The visitation quarantined us four weeks, which 
took me from the office and kept me in complete isolation at 
home. The confinement continued thereafter also, and during 
all this time not a word or paper came to me from the Publica- 
tion House. Such treatment during and after the affliction, 
with what went before, as elsewhere stated, determined me to 
send in my resignation. The Synod's plan for new books and 
money, for new life in the Messenger as far as my work went, 
thus came to an end. 

The Board's support of me was only half-hearted, under 
pressure in antagonism from the old dominion self-centered in 
the office. They failed to effect any material reduction in the 
office expenses, and the financial condition was not in the least 
improved — for want of backbone. The Messenger, which had 
been adjudged too stiff, stolid, inflexible and set in its ways, 
would under the old system not admit of any new adaptation 
or adjustability. The mere attempt to reform fell short of Dr. 
Harbaugh's idea and his death halted all other efforts. This 
loss was sorely felt. The work was not far enough advanced 
to force its way through without violent disruption and con- 
fusion. In the long years the editor's accumulation of salary 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



was about $15,000. The Board was too much under the money 
power to act freely, and insist on desired changes. They could 
not pay off the old editor and he insisted on staying at his own 
terms and high salary. Unwilling to encounter the rising storm 
my resignation was for me an easy way out. In the end, how- 
ever, not many years after, the old editor received more de- 
cided treatment, less tender of his feelings, and in sheer sym- 
pathy he tried to convince me of his personal friendship, a 
matter for thankful consideration. 

During my connection with the Publication office, I had is- 
sued at my own expense, among other books 'The Ripe Har- 
vest." The little book was a plea calling for more ministers. 
I gave it to the Board outright and they reaped all its profits. 
It was not stereotyped, and the edition of one thousand copies 
was soon exhausted. For writing and publishing of it the only 
reward received was what good it may have done in increasing 
the number of ministers. My larger book called "Creed and 
Customs of the Reformed Church," was issued in 1869; also 
at my own cost for the stereotpye plates. It met with the pop- 
ular favor of the church, to the extent of four successive edi- 
tions, which paid for itself. It was favorably reviewed, noticed 
and criticised. Dr. Nevin, as already mentioned, gave me a 
highly appreciative general public notice of it; and he also 
wrote me a flattering personal letter. This notice from him 
was of course properly esteemed, and it is elsewhere inserted in 
these pages. Many other friends have spoken well of it, and 
from some of the old mothers in our Israel there may still be 
heard words of praise for the book. The most hostile criticism 
sent in was a bitter one from the Roman Catholic paper then 
printed in Philadelphia; it was most probably written or in- 
spired by one of our renegade converts to the papal church, 
who was once my close friend. 

In the lamented death of Dr. Harbaugh, my warm and most 
powerful friend was removed. It was he who mainly 
designated me for the new mission first to be tried at Pitts- 
burgh, and which turned out so well for the general cause. 



AT PHILADELPHIA. 



191 



From him was received in my early ministry many encourag- 
ing and helpful letters full of wise suggestions. A personal 
interview with him always had its good effect. He drew out 
my ability as far as possible in writing for publication ; solicited 
articles for his Guardian, for the Review, and for the Messen- 
ger. As chairman of the Tercentenary committee, he appoint- 
ed me one of the set of special contributors to the "Tercenten- 
ary Monument/' to prepare the article on The Authority of the 
Catechism, read on the occasion of that celebration, January 
19, 1863, in the old Race street church in the city of Philadel- 
phia. As a general thing he usually approved my arguments 
in debate in the Synods, especially in the General Synod's busi- 
ness. Very favorablly too, he made mention of my address at 
the dedication of the new Diagnothian Hall at Lancaster, Pa. 

Most kindly he would entertain me at his house; and if we 
happened to meet elsewhere on special occasions, he wanted 
me to sleep in the same room with him. He never would sleep 
alone. In his vacations, if they fell in also with mine, when we 
sometimes sojourned at the same time with friends at Waynes- 
boro, near his old home, we had happy days. Those were the 
seasons for recreation, profit and fun. Open-hearted as a 
child, he would argue by the hour, on some new phase of theo- 
logical thought, or, on the turn in the controversial aspect of 
the times. And while he could not be budged by any "bull- 
dozing" efforts, which some in public tried on him occasionally, 
yet if rightly handled, he was ready to modify his views, at 
the mere suggestion of one of his humblest friends — provided 
always, that the true light be turned on. 

Thus, for instance, it is remembered, once he had prepared 
an article for publication, setting out that the priestly office in 
the ministry went before the prophetical ; since it was first by 
the priestly function that the act of baptism was to be admin- 
istered; and by that rite formal entrance was given into the 
church, to be followed by prophetic teaching of doctrine and 
duty. This conception was for some time most stoutly maintain- 
ed by him on one summer afternoon at my mother's. That is 



192 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



essentially the practice of the Romish system, where the priest 
is first above all, to baptize into discipleship. But the Lord's 
commission, we endeavored to show, implies and provides in 
general for something else rightly to go before the baptismal 
act antecedently. Jesus says : "Go and preach," teach, instruct, 
call hearers and bring them, by the prophetical function, to ac- 
cept the good news ; then baptize them by households if pos- 
sible into discipleship, into the name of the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. Like a flash a change of conviction came 
to him and he said : "George, you are right." His article was 
revamped and modified accordingly. 

In the long looked for book published thirty years too late, 
on Dr. Harbaugh's life, there are many interesting things told 
— well told. But the half has not been told, as the Queen of 
Sheba said to Solomon ; but it is not for me now to enter into 
a fuller record of that great man's words and acts. Much has 
already been lost and more is continually falling into oblivion. 
About his inaugural address, delayed in publication by the 
burning of Chambersburg he wrote to Dr. Fisher: "As time 
has elapsed, do it up as quickly as possible. The spirit of the 
occasion must not die away before it appears." The biograph- 
er should have heard this word as to the dying of the spirit of 
the occasion. 

MISSION WORK IN DELAWARE. 

Along with the Synod's appointment, consigning me to the 
publication interests in Philadelphia, there came also calls to 
do occasional preaching and mission work. The four years 
there has such side issues ; and before shaking their dust from 
my feet, it is proper to mention some of them. First, the Gen- 
eral Synod had elected me a member of the Board of Missions. 
For some years its secretary, and then the president ; until the 
office was declined when on account of the controversial jeal- 
ousy the party management for the time turned the main work 
down to the classes in disorganized and sporadic efforts. The 
peace movement in after years had hard work to bring the 



AT PHILADELPHIA. 



193 



missions back again to their constitutional relations under the 
General Board. The form of charter incorporating "The 
Board of Home Missions of the Reformed Church" was my 
work and by my personal attention and expense it was passed 
by the legislature at Harrisburg. The same may be said too 
of the act incorporating the "Board of Publication of the Re- 
formed Church," by the same legislature. Also, that of the 
"St. Paul Orphan Home" at Butler, Pa., as well as the act cre- 
ating as a legal body the General Synod's Board of Directors 
of Orphan Homes. 

Returning from Washington after Grant's first inaugura- 
tion, March, 1869, whither the General Synod had sent me to 
look after a claim to a church property of right belonging to 
us, the report made seemed favorable. Subsequently by a de- 
cree of the United States District Court, the said property was 
declared legally ours, "mainly on the intelligent testimony of 
Rev. Mr. Russell," as the judge put it in his printed decision; 
from which the Lutheran claimants appealed and as far as 
now known it yet so slumbers. On my way back at Wilminton 
my course was changed by an urgent request to visit some 
scattered Pennsylvania people of our Church who had since 
the war settled below Dover in the State of Delaware. 

The next day we held a meeting in a cannery building in 
Camden, Kent county, Del., which a goodly number of Re- 
formed people attended. Among these Jacob G. Brown and 
family, ten souls; Wilson I. Linn and family, ten souls; and 
the Wetzels, Widemyers, Roushes, Smiths, Fesigs and Good- 
mans. Thus my service was the first of any Reformed minister 
officially in that State. Out of this grew the first Reformed 
church in Delaware. On invitation we gave them service every 
two or three weeks, and they then at my instance petitioned 
Philadelphia Classis to organize them into a congregation. 
During the spring and summer with some of the local brethren 
we secured and explored all the country for miles around to 
find people, if any, in sympathy with our church. For these 
visits and explorations they paid only the railroad fare down 



194 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and back. Finally the Philadelphia Classis gave authority for 
the organization of the members in partibus into a Reformed 
congregation. The request having been granted, as the explor- 
ing missionary was not then a member of that classis, another 
was sent down for that time to preside at the organization. 
Thereafter, it was always my turn for more than a year and a 
half, to serve them on the same as above free terms ; attending 
also as far as able to pastoral visits at the houses, catechising 
and confirming the new members, baptizing the children and 
administering the holy communion. Only recently a noble 
mother in Israel wrote from the fullness of her heart some 
tender memories of her confirmation when a young girl along 
with her venerable father at the same time, thirty-six years 
ago. Faithfully she now stands at the head of a most inter- 
esting family in the Lord. 

It was surprising to the native Delaware people to see how 
many were gathered into the church, and what reality there was 
evinced in our system of personal educational religion — with- 
out holding campmeeting revivals. The main denominations 
then known there were Methodists, Baptists and a few Presby- 
terians and Episcopalians, in the larger towns, and Quakers. 

The St. John Reformed congregation in Kent county, Dela- 
ware, became settled in Wyoming, four miles below Dover. 
There they built a church and provided a parsonage. Rev. C. 
Russell, my brother, became their first settled pastor, and the 
Board of Missions gave some help in addition to the small sal- 
ary. Ten years after my first explorations, they held a sort of 
jubilee, inviting besides myself, then from Washington, D. C, 
also several of their old pastors from their former Pennsyl- 
vania homes to join in the joyous festival. My brother and 
two other ministers, who later for short terms served them, 
have gone to their reward. The congregation has been re- 
peatedly and long vacant, and some of their later experience 
has been exceedingly trying and bitter, leaving disastrous ef- 
fects in Delaware. 

One unsuccessful pastor they could not for some while shake 



AT PHILADELPHIA. 



195 



off even after he had lost the confidence of the general mem- 
bership. According to church law his salary still ran on long 
after they found it could not be collected from the people ; and 
the pastoral relation not having been formally dissolved, the 
consequence was the accumulation of a heavy debt. This fin- 
ally forced a sheriff's sale of the church and parsonage. The 
congregation, left without a home or shepherd was all scat- 
tered; and hopelessness shrouded was the once promising 
church enterprise. A few years ago it was my privilege again 
to visit them, though living hundreds of miles away in south- 
ern Pennsylvania ; and after two days going amongst the fam- 
ilies, there were only nineteen of the once one hundred and 
twenty-five members, who were found willing to renew their 
pledge to the church. Thereupon at the next Sunday's service, 
the kind Christian lady, Mrs. Reilly, who held the title to alien- 
ated property by purchase at the Sheriff's sale, agreed and au- 
thorized me to announce publicly, that she freely gives them 
back the church edifice to be "used only and forever as a house 
of worship by the St. John Reformed congregation of Kent 
county, Delaware ; provided it be kept unencumbered." They 
have had later and deeper troubles, but what these were has 
not been definitely known. This was my third mission started 
from the new without salary consideration. Great was my re- 
gret for the sake of a Philadelphia church in trouble to leave 
the Delaware people's mission as it had a most promising out- 
look — and for years thenceforward it did flourish. Possibly 
the doom of the churches of Asia may for a season rest upon 
the fruit in the peninsula. 



XV. 



St. John's, West Philadelphia 



NOTHER mission work was put in my charge hastily 



**■ where the sufferings had also just then well nigh 
brought total disaster. This was the peculiar litigant case of the 
St. John Reformed church in West Philadelphia, which after 
many struggles has lately come to be a shining evidence of 
faith and pluck. Some time since the following was furnished 
for the Reformed Church Messenger, which is hereto ap- 
pended : 

THE ST. JOHN REFORMED CONGREGATION, WEST PHILADELPHIA. 



My acquaintance and personal connection with the St. John's Re- 
formed congregation, of West Philadelphia, dates from the spring of 
1871. Before that time, as is known, a congregation in the Reformed 
interest had been organized under the care of Rev. Albert G. Dole, 
who served it for about four years. When he resigned, it remained 
vacant for some months, and seemed quite choicy in selecting a new 
pastor. The elements out of which it had been formed came mainly 
from a frictional condition in the Thirty-fifth street Presbyterian 
church, about the time its former pastor, Rev. Dr. T. S. Johnston, left 
to become the pastor of the St. John Reformed church, at Lebanon, 
Pa. A fair portion of these people were of Reformed antecedents, and 
it was only natural for their former shepherd to turn them into the 
same church to which he had just become a zealous convert. 

Some of the newly-gathered members had social, civil and material 
capital likely to benefit the new congregation. But besides the tradi- 
tional Reformed, there were also Baptists, Reformed Dutch, Presby- 
terian and miscellaneous people. They had not a large number at the 
first, but they bought a large eligible lot on Thirty-fifth street near 
Powelton avenue, and built a fine stone chapel, some 35x70 feet, on the 
rear end, leaving space in front for a church to be erected afterwards. 
No new enterprise of my knowledge had better promise for future 
success. The conglomerate composition of the organization, however, 
made it a trouble to keep the diverse parts in working order. Whether 




BY REV. GEORGE B. RUSSELL, D.D., LL.D. 



st. John's, west Philadelphia. 



197 



this had anything to do with Rev. Dole's resignation or not, is an open 
question. But the violence of the Liturgical agitation at that time may 
also be set down as one cause for disturbance. 

During the vacancy in the pastorate they were courted and wheedled 
by this influence and that, while they were supplied by such outside 
preaching service as was within their reach. In a strait for a certain 
Sunday, they engaged me to preach for them on that day. For this 
they paid me $25 — and then tried to learn whether if they would go 
over to the Presbyterians I would be willing to become their pastor at 
a salary larger than the Reformed Church could give. My objection to 
this scheme was that my fealty belonged to the Reformed Church; 
and that inasmuch as the congregation had for about four 
years received liberal mission appropriation, and had also been helped 
to secure its place of worship, it were manifestly improper and uafair 
to carry the organization and property into another denomination. The 
Reformed Church had suffered just such a wrong no further away 
than the Market Square church in Germantown, which had been similarly 
stolen bodily and is held on no better tenure by the Presbyterians to 
this day. Other instances of such dishonesty can also be cited. 

Well, for some time nothing further was heard of the state of affairs, 
till one morning the Rev. Jacob Dahlman came into the Messenger 
office and reported to me at my desk that definite action had been taken 
the day before to transfer the St. John congregation to the Presby- 
terian Church. I told him to call together the Missionary Committee of 
the Philadelphia Classis, of which he was chairman, and put some one 
at once in formal charge of the jeopardized mission. Although not a Ger- 
man interest in which he might presumably have felt more concern, yet he 
acted promptly, and as the nearest available man, that committee put 
me in charge with plenary power. Having then on hand the St. John 
mission, in the State of Delaware, which I had first gathered and served 
for nearly two years without salary, while editor of the Messenger, 
it was not so easy to lay down the one in order to take up another. 
But the pressing exigency decided the matter. 

The following Sunday when I went over to take charge they had a 
Baptist supply. The service was just begun by the time I came from 
my home five miles away, in the northern part of the city. The chapel 
was well filled with an interesting audience. Taking my seat among the 
people I waited quietly till after the sermon, when the announcements 
were made. The preacher said: "Next Sabbath there will be preach- 
ing here again, the Lord willing, and the devil not preventing." Then 
I rose up and said, "This vacant mission of the Reformed Church has 
been put in my charge by the authorities of the Philadelphia Classis, 



198 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



to which it rightfully belongs ; and accordingly, I now take possession, 
and propose holding divine service here myself, not on Sabbath, but 
on the next Sunday." 

At the first service only a very small audience was present. Not a 
member of the consistory, nor any one of the trustees was. in attend- 
ance. They were simply represented by the sexton, who was in their 
employ and under their orders to hold the property. Their next move, 
a short time afterwards, was to lock us out of the chapel ; and the peo- 
ple who had come to the service were disappointed and had to go home. 
It was told us by some boys, sons of the trustees, that we could easily 
break open the door by going through the cellar-way — an offense 
against the law unwise for us to commit, but which they probably de- 
sired. 

Gen. B. F. Fisher, chosen as our attorney, at once took out a man- 
damus injunction; and by order of the court the next Sunday the doors 
were open for people to attend our services. Some frightened and 
discouraged ones remained away. This order was only temporary, and 
some weeks later on a day set for a communion, an increased assembly 
found themselves on that Sunday morning again locked out. Another 
order the next week from the civil court was necessary to get the door 
open for the people, who had to be won back. Only nine members, 
however, were now willing to sign the paper asking for this redress. 
Naturally others worried, became disheartened ; so that the attendance 
continued small. But the Sunday-school re-organized, took on a new 
life and grew to be a most interesting power. 

All at once another severe shock fell, that well-nigh extinguished all 
hope for the already seriously shattered church. The opposition per- 
sonally visited all signers of our petition to the court, and by scare of 
the poor, threatening lawsuits and large costs for carrying on proceed- 
ings — and with blandishments, telling how nice it would be for all to 
join in a peaceful Presbyterian church, with large help, etc., they induc- 
ed all except two of our people to sign a paper formally withdrawing 
the suit from the court. Elder Josiah Longacre and his wife only re- 
mained firm in the claim of the Reformed Church. What was now for 
us to do, was to ascertain what was really the will of the petitioners. 
Hence with a counter paper, setting forth that they had been prevailed 
upon under undue pressure and intimidation to withdraw the Reformed 
Church claim, they signed back again — and Gen. Fisher, with new 
strength, met the other party when they sought to upset his court pro- 
ceedings. 

More serious, however, was the next difficulty soon to be encounter- 
ed. The trustees had confessed judgment to over $6,000 debt on the 



st. John's, west Philadelphia. 



199 



property, and gave a close mortgage on the valuable lot for that sum. 
Then a "Sciari facias" was forthwith issued and the sheriff put up the 
property for sale. A restraining order obtained that morning from the 
court prevented, the sale. This so incensed the trustees that they refus- 
ed when met in the Exchange to recognize or speak to me — charging 
that having done such a trick, I was no Christian, and not even a gen- 
tleman. My family feared personal harm to me thereafter in passing 
some of their residences on the way home from night services — so in- 
tense was the feeling. 

When thirty days were expired, another sale was published with the 
sheriff's writ nailed to the chapel door. This time our attorney bought 
it in, but we had no dollar to pay for the purchase. Only, this halted 
their scheme for sixty days more, to enable us to arrange for the pay- 
ment — if not then, all would be lost. Philadelphia was scoured for 
friendly aid, and some near charges in the country were visited. But, 
all told, only about $1,100 were secured. Then, just before too late, 
Elder George Gelbach secured a loan for $5,000 at 6 per cent., to hold 
the church. 

Before the issue was decided in the court as to which party was the 
true claimant to the organized congregation, the opposition, who all 
along held formal control of the property, robbed the pulpit and altar 
of all moveable fixtures, as Bible, hymn-books, chairs, sofa, organ and 
communion table. At next service, I stood or had to sit on the bare 
pulpit steps ; and the singing was without instrumental or much vocal 
help. This last straw well-nigh broke the camel's back. The civil 
court's order, however, was again invoked. All the stolen articles were 
ordered to be returned. A short delay in obeying the mandate so riled 
Gen. Fisher that he threatened to have every man of the board of trus- 
tees in Moyamensing before night, if they did not forthwith comply. 
They begged that he would allow them till next morning to return the 
removed articles — and under cover of the dark night they were taken 
back without the neighborhood witnessing the act of extreme humili- 
ation. 

Finally, the hard-fought legal contest ended. The decree of the 
court was in favor of our attorney, Gen. B. F. Fisher, and that was all 
he received for his legal services ; but it gave us absolute control of 
the church property — ousting at the same time the whole old board of trus- 
tees and consistory, who had arbitrarily debarred the faithful Reform- 
ed members from voting at the previous congregational meetings. 
Meanwhile, during the disheartening long contest, there were only 
gathered but a small number of male members, out of which to organize 
a consistory, outside of a very efficient and faithful female membership. 



200 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Mr. Longacre and Mr. Bertolf were made elders; and Mr. Culley and 
Mr. Armstrong became the deacons — while they with the pastor and Mr. 
Hancock and Mr. Bryan were the new trustees. The heavy debt was 
somewhat reduced, towards which the missionary personally con- 
tributed all his missionary salary, $300, to December 1, 1871. The Sun- 
day-school became more flourishing; and the congregation multiplied 
fivefold. In November, 1871, the small-pox scourge invaded the pas- 
tor's home, where his brother, Rev. C. Russell, died. This led to our 
removal from the city. Rev. J. G. Noss became his successor in the 
St. John congregation, rescued from extinction thus and so revived- 
You all know the rest, under divine blessing, with the more recent and 
very successful pastors. From suffering to glory ! 

Vote of Thanks for having so faithfully and so well defend- 
ed our rights to the St. John church. 

Philadelphia, May 22nd, 1872. 

Rev. Geo. B. Russell. 

Dear Brother: The Cassis of Philadelphia, at its annual meeting 
in St. Luke's Reformed Church, North Wales, Pa., from May 10th to 
14th, 1872, passed the following vote of thanks: 

Resolved, That the thanks of this Classis be returned to the Rev. Geo. 
B. Russell for his successful effort in connection with St. John's Re- 
formed Church, West Philadelphia, Pa. By order of Classis. 
Yours sincerely, 

Jacob Dahlman, 

Stated Clerk. 



XVI. 



Again In Western Pennsylvania 

TT took some time to recover from our small pox ordeal 
through which we had passed, November and December, 
187 1, in Philadelphia, and which had its providential part in 
cutting us loose from relations formed in the East generally. 
We returned to Pittsburgh to find a home. My wife's family 
received us without apparent small pox scare, or fear of the 
contagion ; and then we had time for a free breathing spell. 
Among the very first general objects of church work was the 
revival of the proposed Pittsburgh College project. Revs. 
Levan, Swander, Barclay and others met here to talk it over. 
Years before it had been apparently well settled already that 
the Reformed church to be of any real use in that western sec- 
tion, should have an educational institution of high grade for 
its young people. A committee of the Westmoreland Classis 
had already been appointed before the war, to look up a suit- 
able location and get the most favorable offers for the starting 
of a Classical school or academy. The plans at first had not 
indeed been very large, nor well matured. But it grew by 
waiting and working, as will appear. 

Mr. John Irwin, as elsewhere incidentally said, first ofTered 
us a nice piece of land just above his residence on the elevation 
east of Irwin and overlooking the town. Besides these acres to 
be donated outright, he was willing also to do his share towards 
erecting the necessary buildings. I was strongly in favor of 
accepting this offer but others on the committee did not act at 
the start. Another offer came from New Florence, a point 
farther east on the railroad proposing more ground, but not 
enough money to secure such buildings as we wanted. After 
that it was reported to us by U. S. Senator Edgar Cowan and 
Hon. H. D. Foster, of Greensburg, that the Westmoreland Col- 
lege at Mt. Pleasant could be bought on favorable terms. With 



202 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the case well prepared by them, and thus put in our hand there- 
fore, the Rev. F. K. Levan and myself agreed to hold a public 
meeting of all the parties in interest, in the basement of the 
Baptist church at Mt. Pleasant. That college property was 
then held as a "stock company." It had in some years gone 
through several changes already, and each time had run down 
more and more, till now it was entirely suspended. The 
grounds, not large, were well located in a native grove on the 
south side of the town. The classic looking brick building was 
large enough for our use and in fairly good condition and con- 
tained large rooms for classes. Philosophical apparatus and 
the nucleus of a library, together worth perhaps $1500 besides 
the college, were included in the offer to sell. It had been 
bought for the Baptists by the stockholders for $15,000 from 
the Presbyterians. But now they would offer to sell to us for 
$9000 as a first figure. However, by showing what financial 
as well as intellectual and moral gain there would be to the 
town and community ; for instance in the way of business alone 
by the money spent annually for each student attending from a 
distance ; and the saving to those who wanted an education for 
their children near here, instead of having to send them from 
home elsewhere at much greater cost ; and the general cultured 
animus made for the benefit of local families and the higher 
moral effect beyond the count of money in dollars and cents, 
their offer was brought down to $5000 then to $4000. We 
earnestly discussed the matter still further, from our side of 
mere money poverty, and at last in the name of the W estmore- 
land Classis, though not formally authorized to do so, we 
agreed to take it at $1500; provided they would help us to 
collect part of that amount in the town and vicinity outside 
of the large surrender as donation from the already generous 
stockholders. The bargain was struck and the college was 
ours, bought without money and almost without price. 

Organizing a good faculty, and planning the other prelim- 
inary conditions which were required for the beginning if our 
bargain was ratified, was the next thing to be done at a special 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. 203 

meeting of the classis. A Board of Trustees was appointed. 
These, then and there, offered to make me president, which of- 
fice, because of my relation to Grace church as pastor at the 
time, was declined. Rev. F. K. Levan became the president, 
and some first rate professors, such as Jos. H. Johnston, A.M., 
were elected and proved efficient, when the sessions were once 
opened. Students came in goodly number. But there was too 
much spread of canvas for the ballast. Very soon debts were 
allowed to accumulate and as a result these swamped the col- 
lege. I had meanwhile withdrawn from Westmoreland to the 
St. Paul Classis. New influences began to work, and these ran 
the whole college project towards disintegration; bad counsels 
prevailed; and the encumbered plant was then sold cheap. It 
is not edifying to rehearse this disaster further. After the 
debts were paid less than $5000 remained; and by some sort 
of hocus-pocus, the whole college fund was later squandered 
for other uses, and so lost to the intended West Pennsylvania 
plan of education. With this last chapter of retrograde ad- 
vance, I had literally nothing to do, except from the outside to 
protest. For a while the main college idea was hung up by 
the heels. There was no railroad to Mt. Pleasant, but there 
was one to Lancaster — and for this, some of the newcomers 
from the East assiduously labored. 

Years intervened. Next winter after my return from the 
East, 1 87 1 -2, another spurt was made then towards a Pitts- 
burgh college. The Synod was now in existence, and had a 
committee to act on an educational project. They still have a 
nominal standing committee on educational institutions. A 
meeting was held in Grace church, at which a tentative plan 
was discussed and adopted. The first thing done was to elect 
me provisional president of a college not yet existing. This it 
was found shut out the hope of others who as we afterwards 
learned were aspirants for such a place; and perhaps it was 
on account of this negative object that opposition came. At 
all events it seemed to become the purpose of some active ones 
now to cover the whole scheme with wet blankets in favor of 
R-15 



204 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Lancaster. No one thing could be finished as an initial fixed 
start; but a number of promising openings were discovered. 
Very good prospects indeed seemed in sight for endowing at 
least three possible professorships, to be founded by persons 
and families, at from $25,000 to $30,000 each. The "Wilhelm 
fund" also that had been first discovered by us, had so devel- 
oped that the donors verbally promised to endow the presi- 
dency and put up the initial buildings. Mr. James Kelley, a 
close friend of my wife's father then owned sixteen hundred 
acres of land near to and running into the woods of Pittsburgh. 
He agreed with me to donate at least fifteen acres opposite 
Edgewood station, seven miles eastward from the central 
P. R. R. depot. This offer in those days at ruling prices was 
estimated to be worth $80,000. The contract articles of agree- 
ment were formally written, and I have the paper yet in hand. 
It would have been only a small part of his benefactions plan- 
ned and intended for us and others. Both he and the whole 
college scheme, however, by a chain of adverse causes failed. 
Eastern sharpers involved and impoverished Mr. Kelley. And 
the stout underhand opposition of over zealous friends of 
Lancaster must also bear much of the blame, if there be any, 
for the delay until final miscarriage of what many can now see 
would have changed for us, the condition of the growing field 
in the Pittsburgh Synod. There will be no such opportunity 
soon again, for picking at so little cost, such promising fruit. 
A hundred of our young men could be gathered into such a col- 
lege, for western Pennsylvania, for every ten that can be drawn 
thence to Lancaster. 

In the minutes of the Pittsburgh Synod for 1874, on page 
32, we find the following: 

"In regard to a college for young men we report that we have learn- 
ed that Rev. G. B. Russell, acting under his official appointment from 
the Provisional Board of Trustees, has obtained from Mr. James 
Kelly, of Wilkinsburg, consent, on certain conditions, to donate a valu- 
able piece of land, of from twelve to fifteen acres in the Thirty-seventh 
ward of Pittsburg, as a site for the proposed college of this Synod, 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. 



205 



and it is of the first importance that this noble donation be definitely 
secured as the ground work of the plans." 

On the same page we learn that Rev. G. B. Russell had been 
appointed provisional President of the college. Dr. Truxal 
in Messenger. 

After having overheard some of the Lancaster sympathizers 
who had probably come to our territory as emissaries to work 
in this Synod to prevent large projects here in favor of the 
East; I declared my purpose openly not to allow them to get 
possession, as they proposed, of old Kelley's land, and then sell 
it and take the proceeds to Lancaster. The whole college pro- 
ject for western Pennsylvania thereby died with that thrust. 
It is said "Opportunity only comes once and never returns." 
If it has been the ordering of divine providence, none need 
complain, but if misguided counsels prevailed to prevent the 
promising good, the responsibility must be lodged somewhere. 
Such an institution would have become in a sense also a feeder 
for Lancaster, especially for the higher classes, and would have 
called out many young men to bless the church, whose educa- 
tion will not now be begun much less attained. The Kelley 
land, and the Wilhelm intended benefactions were both lost by 
what may have been Providence, or human scheming. 

THE WILHELM LEGACY. 

It may now be interesting to those who are not acquainted 
with the inner facts, to have a brief account of our most con- 
siderable college gift, so far as the Reformed Church in this 
country is concerned. It forms an epoch, a beginning example 
in our large benefactions. It has by force of example later 
brought out other gifts in bigger proportions at least than were 
known in previous years. This generous act of church benevo- 
lence has its inside history, hitherto unwritten ; and which 
ought not to be all lost for this generation, or for those follow- 
ing. Without varnish it is thus presented, as it stands related 
to my knowledge and experience: 

Rev. A. B. Koplin, in his early and heroic useful work in 



2o6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Somerset county, Pa., 1857- 1863, and again in 1867, was the 
honored instrument in providence of bringing into the mem- 
bership of the church, among others, the "Wilhelm family," 
consisting then of three brothers and two sisters, all elderly 
persons and unmarried. The youngest of them at that time 
was perhaps some sixty odd years of age, and some of the oth- 
ers were above three score and ten. They were plain, unedu- 
cated and well-to-do farming people, who by frugality and 
business economy as well as by fortunate circumstances, had 
become possessed of large landed property some of which were 
farms and also some timber tracts containing great prospective 
mineral values. Their home was a substantial country log 
dwelling, but exceedingly plain in its furnishings without a 
yard of carpet ; and they lived here together in frugal abund- 
ance and daily farming industry, but happy, in a style corres- 
ponding to their country place, not far from Elk Lick, Pa. 
They gave their pastor a cow and calf, because he had none 
and hinted that he must buy one. Before the classis met, they 
sent him "a quarter of beef and other such things" to help him 
to keep the preachers ; who shared their good cheer and wel- 
come in the visits paid them. 

After their reception by confirmation into the church, they 
had free conversations with their young pastor, as to the bless- 
ing brought to them in the gospel. They said : "We are so glad 
we are saved. We want to do something for the church." 
What that should be neither he nor they at that time had any 
clear conception of. The pastor then invited Drs. F. K. Levan 
and G. B. Russell to visit the charge, held a protracted meeting 
continuing some days, and consult with the pastor and these 
people as to their best plan of blessing the church. These vis- 
iting and consulting brethren were kindly received, they prayed, 
preached and talked for several days. The result was that the 
whole family were heartily agreed to give as a free will thank 
offering, a goodly portion of their large earthly possessions to 
the Lord for the use of the church into which they were gath- 
ered for their salvation. Several general schemes were laid 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. 207 

before them and they came to a definite conclusion as to large 
and generous benefactions. 

Their "word was as good as their bond." And not to seem too 
eager to hasten the matter unduly, it was agreed and settled 
that a paper embodying the proposed plan which definitely set- 
tled should hereafter be carefully in legal form drawn by Judge 
Baer, of Somerset, as they suggested and to which we agreed. 
In this they would set apart at the start for early use not less 
than sixty-five thousand dollars as a portion of their joint es- 
tate then easily made available in a short time for these several 
objects of Christian benevolence: First, there was to be a Wil- 
helm professorship or president's endowment, and also a col- 
lege building fund; then, a missionary permanent fund; then, 
an educational fund sufficient from its interest alone to keep at 
least two students as beneficiaries from year to year; and an 
orphan fund supporting in the same way at least two children 
continually in the home. Also a residuary theological seminary 
fund for the Synod was to come in afterwards. Most of this 
grand scheme was to depend on what their estate would yield 
in later years after the above $65,000 were paid out. Accord- 
ing to this, the missionary fund would help to support two mis- 
sionaries continually, or from time to time, in this Synod or in 
western Pennsylvania. The building fund would every two 
years help towards erecting a new church in such places or 
growing towns within the Synod as might be encouraged 
thereby to organize and build a neat Reformed house of wor- 
ship. All this was too good to keep. We went back to Somer- 
set and sang the L. M. Doxology in Judge Baer's parlor ; and 
some one told the Hausfreund, which brought on much after 
trouble. 

It was expected with joyful hope that at least some of this 
work would begin within reasonable time, surely, already in 
their lifetime. The large expected residuary legacy outside of 
the early first gift of the sum named was to inure to the pro- 
posed college in West Pennsylvania, and if judged well by the 
Synod, also to make possible a seminary. The whole scheme 



208 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



was definitely intended and solemnly set down for the expected 
Pittsburgh Synod's use. And it was therefore a moral wrong 
to use influences afterwards to make these people "break their 
word of promise," simply because some shrewd schemers want- 
ed the benefit for other or similar purposes elsewhere, not so 
much entitled to the rich harvest. 

The farther west was just then exceedingly hungry for 
money at Tiffin. Agent Henry Leonard had been through the 
East before and gathered in this section over $1000 and he tried 
to get this big gift after we had developed it for the interest 
he was then furthering for Tiffin. The Tiffin president also 
seconded these indecent overreaching efforts. As it happened 
eventually both of these men failed of their object; but their 
arguments had helped to distract and unsettle the minds of 
those simple people who meant religiously to keep their "prom- 
ise" once made to us as unto the Lord. The East also thus 
far having failed to develop much of their own great wealth 
at home, in favor of their institutions, began to trouble the 
Wilhelms through their agents, and prominent men sent out 
there to preach in the Allegheny mountains, now wonderfully 
awakening their hitherto dormant sympathy. It was in the 
rush, like a newly discovered gold field. 

When it transpired that there were such good things in 
store "for the church," a lively contest was simultaneously start- 
ed from the various quarters, to possess this newly discovered 
and now fully in sight undeveloped Christian wealth. A sort 
of scandalous scramble ensued. Each agent or representative 
man from the East or West had a specially pious plea to pre- 
sent for his part of the church. This unsettled what had been 
already fixed. The main argument by these outsiders was 
that the Pittsburgh Synod which was innocently waiting was 
not yet quite in full trim and ripe to project and carry forward 
to certain success the great interests covered by the plan as at 
first set forth and approved. These simple hearted intended 
donors were by the pious and greedy applicants harassed, dis- 
tracted and troubled in mind, and for a good while, some years 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. 



209 



in fact, they halted as to what was best to do. This over zeal- 
ous course of the opposing parties came near losing the whole 
promised good to the Reformed church in any section, as 
please note. For local interests and parties in Somerset county 
meanwhile came in with a plea in favor of home benevolence. 
This money or wealth, it was argued, should not go out of the 
county. It could do so much good for the poor at home. En- 
dow a place for all poor and needy persons of every class and 
name. That would be broad and liberal, as good citizens, and 
as real benevolence. Open wide the doors of unrestricted char- 
ity and relieve all comers. This sort of loose charity had its 
meaning for these good and kind hearted old people. At one 
time it looked as though they were thus almost persuaded and 
had settled the matter in favor of such local interests — except 
their first promise to Russell and Levan. Well nigh had they 
been brought to change their sacred intentions to the Pitts- 
burgh Synod, in toto, as to what had been solemnly settled in 
its behalf. 

It took another special trip on invitation of the pastor, and 
plain personal argument repeated by me to get this Somerset 
county project out of the way. It was pointed out to the Wil- 
helms that all the tramps and poorhouse scum from every- 
where would soon be quartered in their neighborhood, and in- 
stead of a benefit, it would likely be a real harm, if not a curse, 
to the community. Happily they saw the threatened , evil and 
that danger at least was put out of the way. 

Meanwhile the elder sister and the oldest brother had died 
and were laid in a beautifully located plot intended as a bury- 
ing ground. The family inclosed these several acres with a 
neat fence ; and then sent for me to come from Pittsburgh and 
dedicate the new grave yard. This afforded me another oppor- 
tunity to discuss their previous plans and again adjust and 
renew them on a somewhat different basis. A new church was 
to be built mainly by their funds, say at $10,000 or $12,000 cost 
— erected on or near their consecrated burying ground. The 
benevolent objects at large in the Pittsburgh Synod were sure- 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



ly however still to get the main part of their promised large 
gift. This was their final resolve, settled in our last plain in- 
terview. But prominent and trusted advisers near them were 
afterwards themselves won over to advocate the Lancaster 
scheme. 

Immortal historic glory that was within easy reach of their 
first pastor, had he remained steadfast and true to his convic- 
tions, agreeing with the wisdom of our plans fully settled by 
them, was lost to him. An Oriental trick using a power for- 
eign to all our dealings in the transaction, brought on a long 
enduring eclipse darkening the aureole belonging of right to 
the faithful mountain pastor. For before all the matter was 
settled, it was planned by the eastern party to effect a change 
of the pastorate. Then the "Lancaster college agent" could be 
made the new incumbent of the pastoral charge, and once in 
place, the ultimate direction of the legacy of course looked 
eastward. If that was the right turn of Providence then the 
Pittsburgh Synod has no ground for complaint. 

Meanwhile another brother and the last sister had died. Thus 
only one of the original five intending donors remained to be 
influenced so as to change their united promise. He took sick 
and suffered. It seemed a hard thing for him to do to change 
their plan. In the end the last survivor had little time indeed to 
decide for himself and all his family. The will had to be hur- 
riedly made, shortly before his death, and did not come within 
the time limit of the State law for making bequests to benevo- 
lence, excluding heirs. So that what was all along intended 
not to happen did happen, and was only prevented from final 
miscarriage by a legal contest involving an expensive com- 
promise. 

It is an open question whether for the good use of the 
church, the gift were far better for Pittsburgh Synod than 
used or tied up at Lancaster. It is possible indeed that a gift 
so obtained may do good. If the Pittsburgh Synod was ap- 
parently robbed of its large working means, the transaction, as 
yet has fruited in only small measure elsewhere. The Lord may 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA* 



211 



bless the legacy for good, in the overruling direction of the 
fund. But we who developed the rich find and prepared the 
way for its charity feel sore that it was not at least a fair deal. 
Lancaster influence and men trained in that interest predom- 
inate the Pittsburgh Synod, and its main work is side tracked. 

Since the foregoing was written, Rev. Dr. Koplin sent me 
his version of the "History of the Wilhelm Legacy," contri- 
buted with its Eastern gloss to the College Student. It 
is of course as far as it goes authentic and sets out 
its main features, but does not give the inner details 
as written here ; and his memory does not seem to be 
exactly full and fresh as to the promise of the Wilhelms 
plainly made in his presence to myself and Dr. Levan. He 
only mentions twenty-five thousand dollars of the sixty-five 
thousand definitely promised us. The other and subsequent 
stages through which the case passed, before the final decision 
in favor of Lancaster can be read between the lines. We do 
not question the sincerity of his general statements. The con- 
version of their first pastor and of their legal adviser, as well 
as also in a measure my coworker in our original Pittsburgh 
Synod's plans ; and the years of haggling during the long in- 
terval, bringing death to all but the last brother of the family, 
and the chain of continuous influences used, wrought the 
change in favor of the eastern institution. It is not necessary 
now to give the hidden reasons leading to the final determina- 
tion of the gift. But this much is quite plain : If they "had not 
plowed with our heifer, they had not solved the riddle," and 
secured the contingent changes of garments. So too, when 
the wooden horse was gotten through the gates of Troy it was 
sure that the Greeks were on the way to successful victory. 

One thing must be taken for granted: Dr. Nevin certainly 
did not know of all that had passed in our interviews, before 
he was induced for a purpose to make the rough trip into that 
mountain region — or likely he would not have raised his voice 
and used the prestige of his great name to divert from its ori- 
ginal intent the legacy to Lancaster. If he could be liberal 
minded enough to advice Ex-President James Buchanan, after 



212 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



his conversion under Reformed teaching, to join the Presby- 
terian church in which he had been born and raised, he would 
surely not get down from his high sense of honer or right to 
aid- in gobbling a large sum already set apart by clear intent 
sacredly for another benevolence. The good fortune secured 
for one institution, at the cost of another part of the church, 
has measurably blinded the clear vision of some other eastern 
men not knowing the case fully, to the moral wrong involved 
in the Jesuitical manipulations used to accomplish the change. 
It has not however, we are convinced, happened all by chance ; 
though the Providence which permits such things may not 
justify all the acts of men in any questionable scheme, yet the 
Lord has some good reserved. The reward will come. Pitts- 
burgh Synod, if true to the work, must yet provide educational 
institutions to call out some day its young people and prepare 
them for use. No distant establishment however good can 
quite as well do the work. 

To ease the conscience and justify the gobbling of the Wil- 
helm legacy, the argument was put up that the Pittsburgh 
Synod could not maintain a college. Answer to that is, that 
besides the above means indicated as at hand, there has been a 
seminary professorship endowment of some thirty thousand 
dollars secured, and the science building received a large sum 
more than a proportionate amount from these same synodical 
bounds ; while for the increased endowment of the seminary, 
and the $150,000 enlargement of the college funds each receiv- 
ed more liberal aid than was obtained from like territory in the 
East. Tiffin also reaped from the bounds of this Synod, as facts 
show, more than enough to have endowed a separate chair, in 
gifts of ten thousand, five thousand, and smaller sums. And the 
handsome gift to North Carolina was within reach also. No; 
the Pittsburgh Synod is an object lesson in this regard, and 
was not too poor to do the work within its call. 

PERVERTING THE RELIGIOUS TO HEATHEN TRAINING. 

Athletics have come to the front, and the dance has crowd- 
ed out the literary elements of the college ! So laments the 



AGAIN IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. 213 

"Writer," as he calls himself, in one of the church papers. 
And what is sad enough is that it is true. While he has little 
to say as to the triumph of athletics which are censured lightly 
for the affront offered to letters, he has no word to say against 
the dance. More is the pity for the moral cowardice that 
yields so readily to the wrong and falls in with the overflow- 
ing heresy that subverts the original spirit of the colleges. 

Under the reigning popular craze it is sad to know that all 
our institutions of learning have fallen from grace, in the loss 
of what at first was intended for the good of the church. The 
game and the dance were not provided for when the colleges 
and seminaries were planted by our pious fathers. Of their 
piety and comparative poverty the moderate means were 
rather freely given to promote religious quickening and intel- 
ligent fitness for the needed increase of earnest gospel min- 
isters. How far the schools have strayed from that course it 
is not difficult to measure. Those who were intended for larg- 
er preparation to preach the everlasting gospel of salvation 
were intrusted to a few pious professors, oath-bound to teach 
them the main doctrines of the Bible and Catechism and to 
cultivate in the students true vital religion. Prayer meetings 
especially among the candidates for the holy office, and the 
exercise of all practical good works in the Lord were regarded 
as a part of the college and seminary life. Now on the way, 
or there they lose religion. If any students were not yet de- 
cided as to the chief concern, it was a privilege and glory to 
try for their conversion. Those were golden days of promise. 

The main trend now is however the other way. No con- 
verts are made at college. No inroads are made on the un- 
godly young men now always the majority of the student body. 
Some of the few theological students also cool down in zeal 
and choose other professions. The ministry and vital godli- 
ness come secondary to the dance and athletics. Absorbed 
with the enthusiasm for the game and the dance and theatrical 
exhibits, even literary life is a secondary thing and personal 
religion is buried in higher criticism and heathen science. How 
much do the faculty care to subdue the evil ? 



214 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



In the early days of the last century it was often said that 
bricks and mortar did not make an institution of learning, but 
men of brains and noble aims under a few good professors. 
Now the bricks must be large piles, equal to other institutions, 
the professors must be in an increasing list, with growing 
salaries, and the endowments must run into millions, instead of 
the former few thousands, and the reports of champions in 
athletics are the main glory of the noble old college of years 
ago where thought once was king. What makes the differ- 
ence? Certainly not fidelity to the purposes of our Reformed 
fathers. 

The faculty and Board of Directors along with the general 
public opinion of the church, might perhaps study the facts in 
the case. Should it be found that the intent of original donors 
has not been the ruling aim of the powers that be, a healthv 
change may be made. If the large donations and multiplying en- 
dowments are meant only to promote the physical games and 
the dance, at the expense and loss of literary' life and Christian 
character among students in seminary and college as well as 
the equivocal influence of the faculty and trustees, then change 
the tactics to conform to the original purposes of the Re- 
formed church. If that cannot be done at least confess that our 
faith and philosophy is no better than the common article ori- 
ginating in New England. Poor Harvard, following the 
heathen trend, gave up its primitive piety and faith, and though 
it has many students and about $18,000,000 endowment, you 
cannot count the irretrievable loss. 

A godly evangelist employed in every college might help to 
promote holy living among the student body and save the many 
from leaving the old paths of piety and faith to follow the 
multitude to do evil, all making tracks all turned towards the 
devil's hole, whence there is no foot print to show a single re- 
turn. The rough field champion, the alluring enticements of 
the dance, and the sugar-coated theatricals do not make for 
godly living. 



XVII. 



Other Work Grew 

LOSELY connected with the work just mentioned was 
also a new chapter in publications. It was not long till 
the new Synod began to see that there was need of a church 
paper among the people suited to their wants, in order to bring 
them up to the full work of the Synod as that began to develop. 
Local church interests had not been sufficiently cared for by 
the World or the Messenger. Indeed these papers cannot even 
now be generally found at home, nor gain much general circu- 
lation in the families of the charges since the efforts at com- 
binations were made with that end in view long ago. Many 
families do not receive either the western or eastern papers, 
and hundreds of the people do not read them. Saying this as 
something true, in the nature of the case, is not adverse criti- 
cism of these papers, excellent as they otherwise may be ; for 
the real service of which mention is made 'by this reference is 
beyond their reach in the present condition of the people. It 
was much more a plain case in 1873, at the time "Our Church 
Paper" was started as an experimental remedy. Several elders 
in Pittsburgh felt the need so much as to agree to stand good 
for any shortage in funds required for the first year's trial, 
provided I would give my service as editor and manager gratis ; 
a hard bargain, but it was accepted. 

At the same time our paper appeared, another publication, 
by a singular coincidence appeared, with precisely the same 
name. It was issued by the Lutherans in Virginia. This soon 
led to a ready change in ours to "The Reformed Era." The 
new editorial venture now on my own part was a marked suc- 
cess for the Pittsburgh Synod. It developed and intensified 
the church to a degree which is still felt. And the Synod, well 
satisfied with the enterprise, heartily entered into a ten years' 
agreement to have the paper continued under its auspices at 



2l6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



my expense, promising in consideration to give it all the Syn- 
od's sympathy and support; and required me personally to in- 
cur and bear definitely all the pecuniary liability and risk. 

The Reformed Era accordingly was to be thereafter no ex- 
pense to any one but the editor and publisher, working on the 
plighted faith of the synod. It went at once right into the 
homes and hearts of the people. Its spirit was churchly, Re- 
formed to the core, moderately liturgical, but not ritualistic. 
It was free from party schemes, not radical, nor fanatical, but 
freely conservative. It made much solid ground in prepara- 
tion for the subsequent peace movement. Its course was open 
and honest towards the high and the low, the old and the new, 
ministers and people, and the controversialists. It was how- 
ever, not a negative middle, not too classic or too learned, able 
to be read in the family, and not too empty and inane to do real 
service. Dr. Higbee publicly argued and urged the necessity 
for a change in the eastern paper, so that its pattern be after 
that of the type of the Era ; to keep the Pittsburgh paper out 
of the eastern families where the doors were ready to open 
and receive it. 

The Era was published on a strictly cash basis. No one re- 
ceived the paper except on a prepaid subscription. Many of 
the subscribers thought it worth more than the price which 
they willingly paid for its regular visits, one dollar a year in 
advance. 

Because it had earnest friends in the ministry it was intro- 
duced to the people, and where it once made acquaintance at 
the homes and in the families there was no trouble thereafter 
to find it a welcome for the next year also. The two brothers 
Shoemaker sent in from their charges over two hundred sub- 
scribers. Almost as well did a number of the other friends. 

The Reformed population and the geographical boundary of 
the Synod were rather too restricted for a large home subscrip- 
tion list, but its constituency was of the right spirit. It only 
went elsewhere on personal invitation. It continued to grow 
steadily and make new friends without losing old ones. Many 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



21? 



therefore thought it a sore pity when it was early absorbed 
into the Messenger, by what seemed intended as an honest 
overture for an alliance from the east. A leading member of 
the board of editors of the consolidated paper publicly held up 
the Era as a model and urged the combination to be made 
after that general pattern, as a necessity for future success. 
That is high praise. The foreman of the Rodger's printing of- 
fice, Philadelphia, referred to it as "an ideal family religious 
paper." 

After its first year of trial, the Pittsburgh Synod expressed 
its hearty approval, making a contract for ten years continu- 
ance with their "whole support." Imagine the surprise then 
soon after, to hear a member offer a resolution to give the 
Synod's sympathy and patronage to another Synod's paper. 
That was an act of business dishonesty, a breach of good faith 
and violation of the previous contract, revealing a lack of 
moral integrity. 

We could afford no division of patronage in so small a 
Synod. If any wanted to break an honest bargain, they should 
at least provide for the consequences. Few seemed to have 
business capacity enough to grasp the force of the open breach 
of good faith. Friction was created, two sides developed 
strong agitation. The offer to unite the two papers finally 
was accepted by the Synod without me giving up my legal 
rights or admitting the justification of the wrong principle. 

Flattered and wheedled by indefinite promises of money 
gain from eastern parties, the Synod overriding the editor and 
publisher of the Era assented somewhat doubtfully to the con- 
solidation of his paper with the Messenger; and its transfer 
by a simple giving it over, without written terms and condi- 
tion, to the eastern Board of Publication. A verbal reserve of 
claim nevertheless, as to indemnity for the past three years of 
unpaying work and risk in making the paper what it was, 
which might have been reasonably expected to be covered by 
the gain to come in the seven remaining years of the contract, 
was of course right for our part to hold. 



2l8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Now came another moral surprise, as great as the unblush- 
ing trick that had got the Synod to vote its already pledged 
sympathy and patronage to another publication. The eastern 
board itself after it had taken over the Era, when its publica- 
tion had been stopped, actually refused now to make for it any 
settlement at all, for my rights transferred in their benefit. 
This they put on the ground that the good will and possible 
gain from my contract to them, was not from me but from the 
Pittsburgh Synod to which they voted the two-sevenths of 
their establishment's assets, estimated as equal to $12,000. And 
the Pittsburgh Synod in turn no more ingenuous refused to 
make me any compensation for terminating their contract — 
because some said consent was given to the consolidation of 
the papers ; which had by their act gone into effect January, 
1876, and that fact they said ended their contract with me! 
There they left me ; though they were made joint owners by 
the transaction with the Eastern Synod to the two-sevenths of 
its estimated $42,000 — thus gaining $12,000. All of which 
without cost to them they secured at my sole expense by trad- 
ing off my rights in giving up the Era. It does not help their 
case to learn that in the end the buncoed party were cheated 
out of every dollar promised from the bankrupt dealers with 
paying them simply bogus assets, improperly estimated as 
good. 

Bitter disagreement followed. Single handed the misled op- 
ponents through a two days' debate in Synod were held to see 
the unrighteousness in dealing thus unfairly (to their sup- 
posed gain) at the sole expense of my equity rights. Finally 
at the Synod in Irwin, they agreed to compromise. But the 
president immediately after the action wilfully refused to sign 
the order on the treasurer, so that the moiety promised was 
kept back for years. It was the sorest moral business treat- 
ment received from the Synod which had been well served, 
and the contest alienated warm friends and bumped hard 
against previous happy history. Even now with a sorrowful 
heart, the whole case is dismissed. 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



219 



As a mere matter of prudent management, it was a great 
mistake on the part of the Synod. From that point a down 
hill history makes them a mere appendage to the eastern kite. 
Greedy of the promise of gain, they lost both the shadow and 
the substance, and became enslaved and the east reaps the 
revenues always in first collections in Pittsburgh Synod. Want 
for a suitable home paper is still manifest in attempts of two 
or three classes to provide for their people local church papers. 
These in a measure take the place of what the Synod once had. 
Papers from the east or west cannot speak to the hearts of the 
Pittsburgh Synod's people. 

A PROPHECY FULFILLED. 

Elder Henry Leonard, as is well known, took an active in- 
terest not only in the Ohio Synod but also of the whole Re- 
formed church. In the following winter he wrote me a full 
letter in regard to the moderate spirit of my paper and the 
stand which the "Reformed Era" took on the bitter contro- 
versies then agitating our whole Zion. He was for peace ; but 
he and his party wanted me converted to the side of the west 
alone, and hoped that I being then fretted would readily help 
towards that by casting in my lot henceforth with the Ohio 
Synod's radicals. As this was several years before the formal 
"peace movement," it may be interesting to give part and gen- 
eral substance of my answer to him in March, 1876. 

Extract of letter to Elder Henry Leonard: 

The chief subject on which you write has been in mind of 
most men for some years past. Of course there is much room 
to differ on the general church question. The main question 
is however as you say divided into two opposing sides. But 
in both of these there are those who range from right to left ; 
so that the left of the one side may be close to the other's right. 
There is a true historical standpoint between — not a mere neg- 
ative exactly middle ground of indifference or colorless neu- 
trality. 
R-16 



220 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Now, as you desire truly to learn my inward conviction and 
position, I will repeat frankly; for I have nothing to conceal. 
I claim to be neither extreme high church, nor miscellaneous 
low church — but Reformed church; neither in the forefront of 
the east, nor of the west ; neither ultra liturgical, nor radically 
antiliturgical. I think there is somewhere in this historical is- 
sue a true safe ground ; sound and consistent in the old as well 
as new historical Reformed position. This is where the whole 
church should come, and be brought unitedly to stand. For 
my part, I cannot see the great necessity (as you seem to 
think) for standing within either party's line. Nor is there a 
true historical standpoint on what you call "neutral ground." 
Merely because some drum-major may try to recruit his ranks, 
is no absolute reason sufficient in itself for me to join therein 
and parade with him. This does not require one to curry fa- 
vor from either side — nor expect at this stage protection from 
both. For, knowing too well the bitterness of party strife, 
there is nothing to hope from the fierce spirit aroused by the 
extreme party leaders, on the one side or on the other. Nor 
have I personally much to fear from either; no favor to ask, 
except peace. 

The warfare as now carried on by Tiffin and Ursinus is 
simply shameless ; and is confessedly damaging to the peace, 
unity, and prosperity of the whole Reformed church, without 
any sufficient cause, or compensating benefit, while Lancaster 
fairly bristles in defence as bad. Some of the dogmatism and 
assumptions of extreme advocates of the eastern party are 
quite as much also out of place on their side as on the other. 
The day must come, sooner or later, when the church will 
clearly see that this whole destructive and wasting method of 
contending for the truth, while claiming to keep the faith of 
our fathers, in such a fratricidal controversy, is not only en- 
tirely wrong, but most disastrous to the growth of our Zion. 
It will some day appear that the party chiefs and destructive 
champions have not done the best service for the Reformed 
church; nor have they performed the most hard labor, nor 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



221 



reaped the most fruit of grace from their sad work of perse- 
cution and internecine strife. When the "breakers ahead," of 
which you speak shall have been passed, the occupation of 
these party leaders will be gone forever. Your satisfaction 
with Dr. Schneck's book, is not nearly as much for me. It 
does by no means settle the question nor end the strife and 
conflict. 

The World and the Messenger both have hitherto worked 
against my paper, the Reformed Era. We were trying faith- 
fully from our position, as far as we can without offence, to 
work for the good, the unity, the peace and the growth of the 
Reformed church and the cause of Christ. If that be blest of 
the Master, our hearts will rejoice together, here and in 
heaven — to which we trust all our militant brethren will also 
find saving entrance. 

So far the letter. Much of that prophecy has indeed come 
true. Time works changes and seeds take time to grow. The 
"peace movement" came to a head in Dr. Weiser's resolution 
passed at the Lancaster General Synod, 1878. As originally 
drawn his resolution assumed and rehearsed as true, that the 
church was "in fact divided," disrupted. He showed his pa- 
per before offering it to some of the brethren for consultation, 
myself among others. To record, in a synodical paper as a 
fact that the church had split actually would have given too 
much leverage to both of the opposing sides; and more than 
this, the fact was not yet historically true. With this state- 
ment stricken out, at my earnest suggestion, and a few verbal 
modifications to which he heartily assented, the paper was 
offered and the still united church set out to obtain peace. 

A spontaneous offer then came publicly from the Christian 
World management after my paper was transferred to give 
me ample room in its columns to ventilate any grievances for 
the treatment in the discontinuance of the Reformed Era, after 
a three years' successful trial. Usually careful, a writer, in a 
historical review gives its brilliant life at only two years — an- 



222 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



other slip of a historical fact from which misleading conclu- 
sions might hereafter be drawn. 

I had been furnishing before the Peace Commission met, 
some contributions for the World, preparing the minds of the 
western people for some peaceful termination of the liturgical 
discussions ; which could not have reached them through the 
Messenger. The editor had appreciated these in spirit as 
"crisp, fresh, appropriate, and moderate enough" for his west- 
ern readers. Rev. Dr. Bomberger, chief leader of the anti- 
element, a born controversialist, a ready fighter and splendid 
debater, expressed publicly not only his surprise, but his hearty 
approbation, when he learned who was the author of these 
articles. Yet the World's editor, wary as he was, feared to 
make at that time an open matter of his personal proposition 
to take me in with him in the editorial management and owner- 
ship of the World. I was not at the time in any pastorate or 
other special church work ; and he opened correspondence with 
me, with a view to graft me into that paper, or hitch teams. 
It seemed another possible opening to put me, where the Ohio 
Synod had previously in 1861 elected me to work — though for 
special reasons I refused then to take the office. Just then, 
too, there was still public feeling in that Synod against all who 
were known in general as liturgical men; and they were not 
quite sure that I was safe to speak to the west through the 
World. 

Hence, my advice to the editor, Dr. Mease, was that for the 
time being, he had better at least nominally hold the reins him- 
self — until his Board or the whole Synod were fully satisfied 
with his proposed arrangement for making me a share holder 
with himself. Meanwhile, I could furnish him as he wished 
such editorial matter, in cog., to the extent of some columns 
each week, as would help to prepare the way for a full and 
open union of forces. But it never came much further. At 
the General Synod at Lancaster, after I had gone to the Wash- 
ington mission, he still was anxious to negotiate with me for 
a union of forces. But I was called away from that meeting 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



223 



before adjournment, and he went home without reaching any 
conclusion, except that I should continue to write up the peace 
movement. Some time thereafter he had to give up the World 
as his financial resources had gone under. When he was desti- 
tute and sick in the far West, my ten dollar relief contribution 
was sent, but came only in time to help to bury him. 

REFORMED CLAIM ON PITTSBURGH CHURCH PROPERTY. 

Besides reference to the property in Washington, which we 
claim as in equity belongs to the Reformed church, an ac- 
count of which we have given elsewhere, there is more of the 
same kind to be remembered, all taken from us unjustly. There 
is the Conway street property in Baltimore, on which was the 
original German church of Otterbein, now held by the United 
Brethren, who claim both him and his church. He never left 
our Synod nor that church of which he was so long pastor 
even from 1778 till his death in 18 13. His successors, having 
stealthily crept in gradually alienated the pious members from 
the Reformed denomination and absorbed them and the valu- 
able square of ground with its improvements. It may have 
been thought pious, but it was hardly godly or just to steal 
people and use other church's possessions to enrich the new 
union. It is said, they are required to teach our catechism at 
least once a year in that church in order to cover their holding 
of the Conway street Reformed property from its rightful suc- 
cession ; and they do it conscientiously. 

Also the Market Square church property in Germantown, 
Philadelphia, taken over to the Presbyterians by the over pious 
Rev. Jacob Helfenstein when he left the church of his fathers, 
where he was too good to stay in the New Measure days. The 
present congregation worshiping in that fine sanctuary per- 
haps do not generally know that they are in possession of stol- 
en property. They can show no title to the property — only it 
was brought to them by the disaffected minister of the Re- 
formed church; in which act some few members acquiesced. 
But the Reformed congregation did not all go with the defec- 



224 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



tion, and the title could not be alienated by the majority's 
transition to the Presbyterians. The law does not recognize 
such acts as a valid transfer. Mr. Charles Bockius often told 
me that he and others desired that the Reformed authorities 
should take measures to recover the alienated Market Square 
property. Only lately a Miss Bockius died in Germantown at 
the age of 85 years who claimed to be a member of that Re- 
formed church. The case was referred by the Eastern Synod 
years ago to a committee of which Dr. S. R. Fisher was chair- 
man. They had but little encouragement and no money to 
prosecute the claim ; then in tired out patience their effort died. 
Shall it be for ever left in unrighteous Presbyterian occu- 
pancy? Or does the Reformed church forget the work of 
Schlatter there? 

At the meeting of the Pittsburgh Synod, 1906, there was 
some action taken in regard to the German church property, 
Sixth and Smithfield streets, Pittsburgh, Pa. If it be of any 
use to the committee to whom the matter was given in charge, 
the following from some old notes is herewith reproduced. 
It is best to get at the original documents, and make out a 
historical case. 

Interesting facts in history are sometimes left half buried 
in the dim past until well nigh forgotten. Take this instance 
in illustration: 

A church property of great value in Pittsburgh, Pa., is half 
ours by implication and equity. It is the one on Sixth 
avenue and Smithfield street, extending half a square on each 
street and bounded by two alleys. It was donated by the 
Penns, John Penn, Sr., and John Penn, Jr., to the Reformed 
and Lutherans jointly in 1787 as "the two German religious 
societies," the one holding the "invariable (that is "unaltered") 
Augsburg Confession/' and the other called the "German 
Presbyterians," meaning the Calvinists or later German Re- 
formed, not then so mentioned. This was after Rev. J. W. We- 
ber had been preaching to our people in private houses, Diehl's 
and others, and presumably before there were distinct organi- 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



225 



zations of either church in that city. The two German inter- 
ests held similar close relations, also in many other places, 
worshiping alternately in the same houses of worship in the 
east as well as here and in the west. To these two denomina- 
tions was this piece of ground given for "one or more houses 
of worship" ; evidently looking forward to the time when each 
should be able to have its own church as it has since happened 
in many other towns. 

Similar donations were also made in Pittsburgh to the Pres- 
byterians of a large piece of ground on Wood street (now the 
First church), and to the Episcopals on Sixth avenue, now 
Christ's church. This fact disposes of the assumption that 
the above named "German Presbyterians" might be the "Pres- 
byterians" the same as on Wood street. These last are of 
Scotch-Irish descent, while those known then popularly as the 
"German Presbyterians," German Protestants not Lutherans, 
were of another class of people, first cousins to the Lutherans, 
and who often in early days of weakness held church property 
and church services together. So it was in Westmoreland 
county, and especially throughout the east, in Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere. They 
were thus designated, by English people who knew little of 
them, as those Germans, Reformed Calvinists, who were not 
Lutherans, nor Dunkards, nor Moravians. 

Historically it is plain our Reformed church is descended 
from those Germans of near kin to the Lutherans who were 
to have this property in joint ownership. Hoch Deutsch, ig- 
norantly translated High Dutch, was harder to be kept in mind 
than "German Presbyterians," as the one side holding these 
union churches, and worshiping alternately with the other 
more easily designated name. This establishes our historical 
claim to one half the property herein described. The church 
afterwards built on the said lot at the corner of Sixth avenue 
and Smithfield street was for the "two German denominations." 
No other Presbyterians ever claimed any part of it. Our people 
with the Lutherans owned together the church and graveyard. 



226 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



From the first and for many years all was peace and harmony. 
They being few in numbers and weak in material ability, it 
was agreed to have but one house of worship and but one min- 
ister for the time being, alternating in succession between 
them. The arrangement of union among other provisions 
decided that the acting minister should be LutReran or Re- 
formed arranged in succession. That is, if at any time the 
present pastor left them, his successor should be of the other 
denomination. If one had been a Lutheran he was to be fol- 
lowed by a Reformed. As to how many years each was to 
serve, nothing was said; but only if a change was made from 
any cause, the next one must be of the other communion. 
Whichever side was in possession of the pastorate for the 
time, it was the duty of the minister to catechise the children 
in each one's denominational confession and confirm them as 
members of the church of their parents. Undue influence was 
not to be tolerated in favor of either side. This rule had its 
drawbacks, but had to be as fairly as possible applied. 

In the "forties" rationalism and "freiheit" began to prevail, 
and the long time customs of the fathers began to give way to 
new conditions. The former ministers were mainly earnest, 
evangelical and pious. But some were not. It happened that 
a Reformed preacher, Rev Robert Kahler, tried to improve 
the spiritual condition of the people. Against his "sharp 
preaching" a protest was sent in, stating that "when they 
worked hard all week they wanted to rest on Sunday, and it 
made them tired in church to hear so much about hell and the 
devil." 

The earnest pastor had secured the election of some men as 
members of the consistory favorable to his idea of spiritual 
work. But on the Sunday morning set for their induction into 
office a riot was raised in the church, and the women of the op- 
position party entered the altar enclosure, withstood the offici- 
ating minister and literally tore off his robe. He was then 
put out of the church; and the congregation afterwards de- 



OTHER WORK GREW. 



227 



clared themselves independent: "gans unobhengich von alien 
Synoden." 

This declared that they were neither Lutheran nor Re- 
formed — "Frei Evangelisch" ; and therefore they were by that 
fact alone on their own declaration, not the lawful possessors of 
the property. Though the Reformed Synod had held its ses- 
sion in that church in 1833, there seemed now no church higher 
authority to make this a case for discipline, and no steps were 
taken to determine the owners and eject the false claimants. 

Afterwards, they held the property, and went so far as to 
have an act passed by the State legislature in the "Fifties," to 
empower them to remove the dead buried in the church lot. 
They built houses, stores and dwellings along the Smithfield 
street front, rented them, received the proceeds and used them. 
The revenues from rents and incomes made it a sort of politi- 
cal object to be in the church council and handle the large 
money. With this they proceeded to hire a preacher by the 
year or for as long as he suits them; and also are prepared 
with means in hand to dispute in court any claim set up to 
oust them. No one is strong enough single handed to institute 
civil proceedings against the revolted combine many of whose 
membership may be innocent successors. 

The descendants of the old members once buried there, the 
Rahans, Reiters, Bechlers, Sieberts, Keils, etc., could be recog- 
nized before the courts now. Similar cases are not wanting 
on which to base ejectment proceedings in equity. When they 
were before the legislature for a law to permit them to remove 
the dead, desecrate and secularize the grave yard, I had Sena- 
tor Penny insert a proviso in that act, to the effect that "noth- 
ing therein should be construed to the detriment of the rightful 
owners of the said church property." It was long before we 
could find trace of the title papers. By research finally it ap- 
peared that in 1787 this part of the State was in Westmore- 
land county. The county records therefore at Greensburg 
contain the sought for papers. I reported the matter to the 
Ohio Synod and asked it to take the case in hand. In its jeal- 



228 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



ous wisdom it appointed a man away out in Ohio, who knew 
little about the case and perhaps cared less. So it sleeps these 
years. The property diverted from its original intent is quite 
valuable. 

The inchoate and nebulous condition of the Reformed church 
of this country in the former century is doubtless the reason 
why such cases of loss, both in properties and congregations 
were allowed to pass for the time being with property, by the 
higher authorities, whose right and duty it is to supervise and 
protect such invaded rights. For the most part, individual 
members were not trained to know what to do in primal de- 
fence of themselves and the congregations when such wrongs 
occurred. And the classes, few in ministers and elders, widely 
spread over large districts of country, had not come to realize 
well their supervisionary duties as to the congregations and 
pastoral charges. Synodical bodies made up of the classes 
were still less self-conscious of the higher jurisdiction which 
they were to exercise over the lower bodies. So it happened 
that strict protection was not given in all cases. 

Now you can see in a measure why the Smithfield street 
property and others to which reference has been made, were 
not at once restored to their rightful owners. Such titles how- 
ever do not run out or lapse or vitiate in time by adverse pos- 
session. Hence the saving clause that I had Senator Penny 
insert in a supplement to the act passed at the request of the 
German church pirates, authorizing the removal of the dead 
from the graveyard, covers the claim forever of "the rightful 
owners" and their successors. The lack of proper or wiser 
management of the Ohio Synod in whose bounds the case then 
was, and the failure of its appointed committee to get at the 
right source for information only made a loss of time, and did 
not test the issue. If they had sought knowledge of facts, I 
could have put them in relation to the members and descend- 
ants then still living. Different influential citizens had offered 
to give a fair share of material help towards any necessary 
costs. But while I could have put the committees hands on the 



OTHER WORK GREW. 229 

original records and held unwritten traditional statements, yet 
by the Synod itself I had not been put in authority to take a 
single step. Individual Reformed descendants and a German 
Lutheran congregation offered to take part in an equity suit, 
and several attorneys had been informally consulted. All was 
halted by trivial circumstances not now to be recited. 



xvin. 



My Fifth Mission 

TN 1873 another mission was put into my hands by the Syn- 
■■■ od's superintendent at East End, Pittsburgh. We started 
it in a Temperance Hall, at the corner of Penn and Highland 
avenues. And this third one here for Pittsburgh, was my fifth 
mission, de novo. Among its first and firmest promoters was 
Elder Geo. F. Rahauser, who was one of the original seven 
forming Grace Church, Pittsburgh, in 1854. His wife was no 
more with him. Other earnest workers also here were Jacob 
Hershey and wife, Herman Ulrich and wife, John R. Baum, 
Mrs. Annie Allen, the Smiths, the Freys, the Netschkeys and 
the Lewis Fundis family. The prospects were fair without 
drawing much on Grace church, five miles away. The mis- 
sionary superintendent urged me to take the mission in charge 
in addition to my editorial work then running on the Re- 
formed Era. 

As in other cases, a church home in which to hold worship 
was the first great need. Dr. D. W. Lewis, a Presbyterian, 
suggested that we might buy on favorable terms a select fe- 
male school property, just then abandoned, eligibly situated on 
Highland avenue near Penn avenue. It was held in stock 
company shares by the patrons of the former school. Being a 
frame building, though at a prominent point, central and acces- 
sible from all parts of East Liberty, it was nevertheless not 
held at a very high price. The house could be readily altered 
and improved at no great cost relatively, so as to make it suit 
for a church or chapel. We at once set about buying it. 

The most difficult problem was how to get the necessary 
means wherewith to purchase and improve. Ever so cheap, it 
would still more than exhaust our present resources and abil- 
ity. Faith conquers difficult things. Therefore I opened a 
book and went among the shareholders of the school building's 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



231 



stock to get them individually and severally to subscribe the 
least price at which they would sell or release their shares of 
now unproductive stock. Some gave up all, signing away out- 
right their holdings ; among these were Dr. Lewis, G. F. Ra- 
hauser and a few others as well. Hon. Jas. P. Sterrett, of the 
State Supreme Court, gave his at half its face. So did some of 
the Negleys, and Mr. Lyon and Mr. Radcliff (now of the 
New York Avenue Church, Washington, D. C). A few took 
only a quarter of their amount; so that by the time I had 
reached them all, there was not such a large sum to pay for the 
purchase of the property. The net first cost to us for that was 
about $1900. This lacking amount however had to be raised 
by miscellaneous subscription. A few gave somewhat liberally, 
so that we bought the property free of debt and repaired the 
building. The improvements added were a vestibule, a rear 
extension recess for the pulpit and altar, a small annex for 
library and infant class, with windows changed into Gothic 
frames filled with churchly symbols in stained glass, vestibule, 
neat pews, and the whole structure inside and out painted. The 
entire cost, as I remember was about $4,800 and all paid at the 
finish but $800 borrowed from the Dollar Savings Bank. The 
chapel was neat and attractive with a decided churchly look. 
It was dedicated amid gladness and joy. The attendance at 
the regular services increased and the membership steadily 
grew in numbers at every communion. The spirit of the peo- 
ple was kind. All was harmony. We introduced the moderate 
use of the liturgy from the start, and there never was a jar 
here on this, or any other church question. A good Sunday- 
school also came. 

Of course the labor was hard, the salary small and not at all 
promptly paid. Some were told that the minister could live 
without much pay as his rent was free in his own house. They 
would have paid probably better to some other pastor, as they 
did in fact as soon as I quit their service, at the end of four 
years. There came a day to resign, and out of personal kind- 
ness a large part of my backstanding salary was remitted out- 



232 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



right. But a - committee of audit from the classis, by some 
bungling mixture of figures in the careless treasurer's books 
by misunderstanding, reported me largely overpaid. Barkley, 
Stouffer and Hoffheins, the committee, without my presence or 
request for any light on the apparent anamolous case, and with 
little sympathy for me, made it appear that the poor mission 
had got much more than needed to pay the pastor. A very 
pertinent question how they had so much flush in the treasury 
to spare, might itself alone have suggested a reference to some 
one for explanation of real facts, instead of making their re- 
port a grossly mistaken record. They simply without seeing 
me reported the figures on the wrong side. 

On a larger salary to my successor the congregation soon 
ran hopelessly in debt. Some thought their iocation not best 
for the church. Therefore before long they sold the finest lot 
in the city, paid off the debt and had a balance of $2000 left 
which passed to the Hungarians. Quarrels among themselves 
led the classis to dissolve the congregational organization as 
the best way they thought to cut loose from serious troubles. 
That was evidently a most unwise act. 

An attempt was then made to reorganize the dissolved con- 
gregation which had at the time of its dissolution by the class- 
is one hundred and twenty-six members. The reorganized or 
new body was to l>e called the St. Mark's church. But this 
transmogrification lost to the Reformed interest about one 
hundred members now cut loose who scattered and drifted into 
other denominations. If you have one hundred and twenty- 
six fishes already taken; and then cast them all back into the 
lake or river in the hope of recatching them and others along 
therewith, you need not be surprised if four-fifths of them are 
never recovered. The classis will not likely ever do such an 
act again — unless the blind folly that did it once may continue 
to reproduce itself. The fine St. Mark's $35,000 church, built 
as a memorial by Mr. Wolff on a lot bought also by him, not 
over half a square from the first location which had been pro- 
nounced too unfavorable for us, gathered a small and fashion- 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



233 



able liturgical congregation, that has not in all these years 
taken on as yet much rapid growth. It has happened that 
other denominations too have thought this immediate vicinity 
favorable for church location. Five large fine places of wor- 
ship are now within less than a square of it ; and one directly 
opposite, of magnificent proportions and style in elaborate 
stone work said to have cost $300,000, quite overshadows St. 
Mark's. And the Methodists have actually erected a grand 
church edifice on the very lot which we originally owned; but 
which for some supposed unfitness for a church, the congrega- 
tion had by order of the classis unwisely sold, and in the trans- 
actions therewith connected, lost its original existence. The 
children of light have yet something of wisdom to learn. 

During my residence at East End, Pittsburgh, I was twice 
at the Philadelphia centennial exposition; one day of which I 
spent mainly with Rev. Dr. Hacke, of Greensburg, in examin- 
ing and admiring the wonders. He was a remarkable man, 
who was then taking his "first vacation" since 18 19, when he 
was ordained to the holy ministry, being then less than twenty 
years of age. His biography I prepared for part of a book 
published by the Westmoreland Classis covering a sort of his- 
tory of the Reformed church in the western part of Pennsyl- 
vania. His long pastorate in the Greensburg charge, at its 
end of fifty-eight years was full of incident and experience. 
All this could not of course be crowded into that limited histor- 
ical sketch, though it forms a large proportion of the book, 
which was restricted by other articles to a rather small and 
definite number of pages. I also wrote and delivered at his 
funeral in 1878 at Greensburg where he was buried, an obitu- 
ary which was published as my last article in the Mercersburg 
Review, full of uncorrected typographical errors not noticed 
by the editor. For some of my success in the ministry and 
work in the territory now within the Pittsburgh Synod I am 
indebted to him, and for wise and prudent suggestions as well 
as for hopeful encouragement. 



234 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



OTHER WORK FROM SMALL START. 

At one period, Dr. Hacke, Father Voight, Rev. W. Conrad 
and myself were the only Reformed ministers in Pennsylvania 
west of the Allegheny mountains and south of the Kiskemi- 
netas river; above which however in the Clarion Classis were 
also about half a dozen, separated from us by long distance. 
Now, within a single lifetime there are five classes constituting 
the vigorous Pittsburgh Synod, with near a hundred ministers. 
It was one of my early and cherished aims to have such a 
Synod formed for that ecclesiastical territory. We found that 
this was then only an unorganized domain, a sort of halfway 
place between the east and the west ; and the pastors obtained 
for our charges from either section, made this only a tempo- 
rary stopping place. There were frequent pastoral changes 
consequently with short pastorates and long vacancies. Then 
there are other things and functions such as only a Synod can 
provide for such a district of the church. Educational and 
benevolent institutions and publications belong by the church 
constitution to synodical work. The result of such a synodical 
organization in western Pennsylvania is manifest in its effi- 
ciency for good already ; and still more could have been done if 
it had not been handicapped by influences from the east, 
that seek "to farm" this district for the benefit simply of their 
institutions over the mountains. Just when all was prepared 
and ready for the new Synod it had happened that I was trans- 
ferred for a season to the east. And so it turned out that I 
was not a member here just when the Synod was actually 
formed. Nevertheless I had part in the labors going before 
historically and afterwards, in the Pittsburgh Synod "quorum 
magna pars fui." The progressive new men in that body are 
now too busy to look back often towards the small beginnings. 

Other churches, besides those now in the number should be- 
long to the Reformed organizations in that section. The Ger- 
man congregation at East End should not have been lost, if 
any steady hand had been near there at the right time to hold 
it. So the one up Girty's Run in Shaler township, which was 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



235 



stolen by a trick of the Lutherans, after it was built and dedi- 
cated under Rev. F. W. Ebbinghaus, and almost entirely paid 
for by the Reformed. Of its cost I paid for them by personal 
effort at collecting $500, but the small remaining debt worried 
the poor people. Though I raised among the outside liberal 
men in the city between one and two hundred dollars addi- 
tional for a pressing need of relief of the struggling interest 
yet advantage was taken by a dishonest lawyer to whom for 
its use the sum was paid. He misapplied that money, and the 
timid pastor allowed himself to be outgeneraled by the Luth- 
eran party, as he similarly did also once at Four-and-a-Half 
street, Washington. Another independent church, with good 
brick edifice in Mansfield Valley on the south side was within 
$1500 of falling into our hands. I had entered into formal 
contract to take it over, and all were united. My removal east 
after I had preached to those people several times and brought 
them into the Reformed spirit and had in fact arranged for a 
loan of the needed funds above what could be raised voluntari- 
ly, left the just unfinished work in timidly fearful hands; and 
so, that which in a short time would have in due course grown 
strong and self sustaining, was lost soon after my transfer to 
1 Washington. About the same time was the like experience as 
to a good German independent church on Mt. Washington, 
the south side, where I had also preached English to their 
great satisfaction and planned with the leaders for a transition 
to the Reformed Synod. Only a few thousand dollars aid 
duly expended there, would have planted our standard among 
a most sterling class of independent Germans, non Lutherans, 
whose descendants largely educated in English even then were 
growing in material and business success in Pittsburgh. The 
way I look at it now, all the above mentioned, along with the 
troubled flock in Allegheny as well, could have been saved to 
the Reformed column if we had not just then been ordered to 
take charge of the projected new mission in Washington, D. 
C, a matter to me of sore regret to this day. 

Not only in such church extension as the above given cases 
R-17 



236 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



show, but also in dealing with turbulent spirits in church meet- 
ings to settle rebellious troubles, it requires calm and steady 
handling with a firm courage and some ventures of faith, in 
order to reach success. For instance, a special case came up 
for adjustment at Meadville before a committee of our classis 
to whom the matter was referred. Elder Bousch of that 
church is a host in himself and the pastor had also special fit- 
ness. But there were also just then wild spirits gathered in 
from the "freiheit" Germans. They wanted to declare the 
congregation independent, "gans unobhangich," of all church 
government. Our committee of the St. Paul Classis was sent 
for in order to quell the growing disorder. A public meeting 
was accordingly called and held one evening in the church to 
hear the case. The house was crowded. Disorder early be- 
gan to show itself and soon became rampant. As chairman 
presiding, I found my hands full enough to restrain them in 
their outbreak. Finally cat calls, tigers and whistles drowned 
the proceedings. "Ordnung! her' auf, ihr hose Leute!" I 
called with commanding voice. Then, in the best broken Ger- 
man at my command and in firm tones, I said: "You people 
must keep order. It is against the law of the State to disturb 
a religious meeting assembled in the house of God. You al- 
ready have made yourselves liable to arrest for this disorder. 
Any who do now further violate this law will find themselves 
in jail before breakfast." Squire Bousch, in a telling speech 
supported and encouraged me in the stand taken, and as an 
attorney gave them further legal warning. By and by, one 
after another left the house, till only a respectable few re- 
mained. But the business was in form then peaceably settled, 
once for all by a congregational vote ; and after that the church 
had peace there followed by prosperity. It has grown and 
flourished ever since. It is an evidence of what timely deci- 
sion and resolute prudence can do to allay strife. Otherwise, 
there might have been an independent congregation of beer- 
men in that place ; and perhaps to this day no such positive 
Reformed church as we now have in that stronghold of the 
faith in Meadville. 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



237 



AT KITTANNING. 

If there ever was any Reformed preaching in Kittanning 
before my first sermon there in the Presbyterian church of that 
place in the fall of 1857, I have not heard of it. On my way 
up to the Clarion region on a collecting tour for Grace church, 
I found a Reformed blacksmith by the name of Crum, in the 
upper part of the town, whose shop was along the Allegheny 
river bank. After inquiring about Reformed material in that 
town it was found that Barbara Evans and himself were about 
all he could name. Intending to return that way by the Thurs- 
day of the next week, he asked me in case he could secure a 
place for preaching and get out an appointment, would I fill 
it? Yes, indeed. So on my return when taking supper at the 
hotel that Thursday evening, the tables being quite full, for it 
was "court week," the whole jolly conversation was about 
Crum's expected preacher! They generally agreed to attend 
the service. At the appointed hour, the bell rang and the Pres- 
byterian church near by was well filled, mainly by men, law- 
yers, jurors, countrymen and citizens. 

Some of them seemed not a little surprised when they saw 
that the preacher was the plain-looking red-headed stranger 
who had been with them at supper and sat in quiet at the hotel 
table only a little while before. He had evidently heard their 
jests about "Crum's preacher." The text was: "No man cared 
for my soul." It took all the fun out of them and they were 
respectfully attentive. After service a number came forward 
and apologetically explained that it was because they did not 
know anything about Mr. Crum being a religious man, nor a 
member of the Reformed church, of which there was none as 
yet in that town, the county seat for Armstrong county. Bar- 
bara Evans was better known as a faithful church member 
who walked five miles out to her church service in the coun- 
try. We have now a local habitation and a name among the 
churches there, with fine new church. Some years afterwards, 
the superintendent of missions offered to send me as the first 
missionary to Kittanning; but I recommended for the place 



2 3 8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



my former Elder, Rev. D. S. Dieffenbacher, then just ready to 
enter on ministerial work. He was a success in this, his first 
charge. He bought and repaired an old church building in 
which I later preached for him and baptized another of his 
children, making a majority of his family who have received 
that initial sacrament at my hands. The congregation was made 
up of some very substantial people, among whom was the 
same Barbara Evans and the man who had secured an ap- 
pointment for "Crum's preacher." Two ministers have since 
come from its membership. 

THE ST. PAUL CHURCH INCIDENT, BALTIMORE. 

The St. Paul church, Baltimore, came into existence through 
severe birth-throes. At the annual meeting of the Maryland 
Classis held at Mechanicstown (now Thurmont), May, 1878, 
a request came up from some sixty or seventy members of the 
Third church, Paca street, Baltimore, for the privilege of be- 
ing organized into a new congregation. The pastor of the old 
congregation was stoutly set against the proposed movement. 
He had very high church ideas on a congregation's "largeness 
and influence essential to commanding respect," in his stilted 
notions, Romanizing tendency and methods. His long time 
dalliance with the scarlet lady was then already plainly draw- 
ing him more and more into her seductive embraces. Uncon- 
sciously perhaps to himself, he was losing his grip on the 
people of his charge, too; and his falling away from what 
makes up Reformed life, in practice, animus and feeling, as 
well as in preaching, widened the gap between him and many 
of the members. They became tired and restive, and longed 
for deliverance. The nearest way out was to colonize in a 
new home, rather than withdraw individually and be lost to 
the church of their fathers. 

These and other considerations led to the respectable petition 
sent up to the classis. But the strong dictatorial self-will of 
the pastor stood in the way to frustrate any such enterprise 
which he feared would weaken his own charge in numbers and 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



239 



promise to advance the growth of the Reformed church which 
he no longer seemed to have at heart ; and which he argued had 
"no call to extend" itself outwardly or occupy new ground. 
Besides, he had not been taken into counsel as to the new move ; 
and that itself set him still more opposed to what he had not 
been called upon to father. Therefore the request presented to 
the classis, after a reference to a special committee, where it 
met his fierce opposition, was reported back with a negative 
recommendation. 

This stage of it was my first knowledge of the matter, hav- 
ing just then arrived from Washington on Monday morning 
after our Sunday service in the mission there. The commis- 
sioners who had been sent to lay the above petition before the 
classis were in a sorrowful mood, and the pastor was arro- 
gantly exultant. The opposition to him at home would now be 
squelched. It was a gloomy hour for those who longed for 
freedom to work for a new congregation, wherein dwells the 
Reformed spirit, giving life to the people in the love of the 
Lord. 

Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Hammet and a third member of the com- 
mission whose name was Gervin, were introduced to me at the 
parsonage during the noon recess, and upon sympathetic con- 
sultation it was determined to press their case under a some- 
what new form. Accordingly we drew up a brief paper, which 
they signed and it was presented at the opening of the after- 
noon session. It was referred to the same committee by sharp 
management that had reported adversely at the morning hour ; 
though objection was raised even to any further agitation of 
the matter — which was regarded as having been finally dis- 
posed of in the previous action. Besides, the pastor was going 
back home, he said, and they would not dare to do anything in 
his absence. And as the committee was the same who pre- 
viously had the matter before it, no other than the former con- 
clusion could be naturally expected. To meet this trouble, 
however, two additional members were added to the commit- 
tee; and all parties "in interest were publicly notified" to meet 



240 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



with them immediately in the basement of the church. So 
then, in half an hour, we had reached a favorable report in the 
committee granting the request, and the matter presented to 
the classis ; which was in fact, as it seemed, glad to cover its 
mistake of the morning session, and to favor the petitioners; 
and thereupon the report was adopted and permission given to 
form a new congregation. 

By this brief work the sixty odd members petitioning were 
saved to the Reformed interest, and a new organization was 
authorized to be established. The result was the St. Paul Re- 
formed church of Baltimore. The event has fully justified the 
wisdom of the action of the classis, in the growth and pros- 
perity of that vigorous congregation in the Monumental City. 
Had it not been for the short turn of the providential meeting 
with the desponding members of the Baltimore commissioners 
after their defeat, and for the new direction able to be given 
to their business, it is morally sure that the new enterprise 
would not at that time have taken actual form. This is a per- 
sonal satisfaction to have been of such use in a far-reaching 
historical issue. Especially as the disaffected pastor sought 
soon thereafter to cripple if not destroy or disintegrate the old 
Third church, by dismissing many others without request, 
when he himself became openly a Roman Catholic convert. 
Thus he tried to repay what the Reformed church had done 
for him in beneficiary aid towards his education for her min- 
istry. His first pastor at Waynesboro had taken him out of 
poverty and ignorance, taught him to read and pray, and study, 
and induced the church at Waynesboro to contribute means to 
educate the man, who after he was lifted up, spurned and spat 
at his own mother. 

The old Third church too, was not materially weakened per- 
haps by the drain from its membership into the new organiza- 
tion ; though it did suffer severely from the effects of its pas- 
tor's transition to Romanism — a Jesuitical preparation for 
which he was perhaps secretly making even while in the pay 
of the very church he was about to betray to its enemies. 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



241 



HOW ALTOONA MISSION WAS BEGUN. 

In 1854 when on my way to Pittsburgh, the town of Altoona 
was a small place of a few thousand people. About eight years 
later it had grown to greater importance. Gen. John Stewart, 
brother-in-law to Col. T. A. Scott, was converted in the Re- 
formed church at Waynesboro, but later had joined the Pres- 
byterians. He had been our superintendent of the Sunday- 
school there, and naturally felt interested in the church of his 
spiritual birth. He mentioned several times to me in Pitts- 
burgh, where he then was ticket agent of the P. R. R. com- 
pany, that among the increasing population at Altoona there 
were many persons from the eastern counties of our State, 
and some of the names had a Reformed sound to his ears. 
They ought to be looked after, was his advice. 

It so happened that a poor German who had invented an im- 
proved car truck, wished me to take his plans to Altoona, and 
lay them before the railroad men there. To serve him, a spe- 
cial trip was made to the shops, in order to interest the fore- 
man of the car department in the helpless German's invention. 
This brought me in contact with the head of that shop, who 
was introduced as John P. Levan. The name struck me as 
familiar. On inquiry it was found that he was a cousin to our 
young preacher of that name. Also that he was of Reformed 
parentage and was son-in-law to a Reformed member who re- 
moved to Altoona from the lower counties. Others also were 
living there, he thought, of the same household of faith. The 
Lutherans had already organized and absorbed some Reformed 
people. It was high time to take care of our material. 

Full of other similar facts, at the next meeting of the West- 
moreland Classis, when Cyrus Cort was examined and ordained 
as missionary to Johnstown, on my motion it was inserted in 
the instructions and commission, that he "also visit Altoona 
and explore the town to find what prospects there were for a 
Reformed mission in that growing place." It was not a very 
long time thereafter, till he reported to our committee that 
there then was more promise for an opening at Altoona than at 



242 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Johnstown ;and that it seemed to demand all his time there. 
Johnstown was accordingly for the time given up; and the 
Rev. C. Cort was was recognized as the first pastor at the great 
railroad place before it had such a wilderness of tracks spread 
out, and which has developed such growth in later years. 

But now some one with keen scent discovered that the 
boundary line of Westmoreland Classis, and of the Ohio Syn- 
od only extended to the top of the Allegheny mountains. Con- 
sequently this new and promising point is in the Eastern Syn- 
od and so was in the territory of the Mercersburg Classis, 
which had no local connections however near to our newly dis- 
covered point in the mount of promise. Without any serious 
contest based on our right of squatter sovereignty before the 
east had moved, the pre-emption claim was yielded. There 
had been other good points nearer home to the Mercersburg 
brethren if they had then been zealous to develop new fields, 
which they had not yet tried to occupy ; nor have they ^ince 
filled up the long gaps lying between. Historically it is true 
therefore that the Westmoreland Classis first occupied Al- 
toona and placed one of its own men in that rich mission field. 
It was by the incidental fact of my trip to that place as above 
mentioned, that the Reformed church had its beginning there. 
Unfortunate circumstances subsequently occurring, some of 
the best early zealous influential working members were lost 
to that church enterprise. The same kind of misfortune has 
often befallen the church of the cross elsewhere. Our Lord 
promised Zion that for all such loss, there shall be a return of 
double — some day. Even now four good churches are there 
already. 

At Latrobe, it may also be mentioned, the first Reformed 
organization was due to similar personal effort. My timid 
brother was serving Ligonier and Youngstown. This latter 
was the nearest church point for our people in the growing 
town of Latrobe. Seeing its promising future, on consultation 
we early called a meeting of Reformed people favorable to be- 
ginning a congregation in that place. A goodly number met 



MY FIFTH MISSION. 



243 



with us and became zealous for the project. Among others, 
there came also a crafty Lutheran who stfove hard as Sanbal- 
let to get a partnership interest in the hopeful work — especial- 
ly as he was brother-in-law to several of the Reformed fami- 
lies. For years, Dr. Passavant had been careful in western 
Pennsylvania, that all his interests should preserve unity for 
Lutherans only when organizing, by excluding our church and 
if possible absorbing all our people. So, applying his rule, it 
became effective against co-partnership in this case. After 
discussion at the above meeting, no small enthusiasm was 
shown, finally resolving to organize on a Reformed basis ; and 
steps were taken at once to provide for a church. The people 
had a mind to the work ; no very long time thereafter they in- 
vited me to assist at the dedication of their house of worship, 
well and prominently located; and for that time as also for 
their means and strength, it was in good style, serving to give 
a name and home in that community, and became the seed of 
grander things in these after years. Had all our material re- 
mained true to the church of our fathers, more wealth would 
be there today. Their present new $32,000 church, and no 
union of property with others, show what was done at the first. 

By the same kind of fostering influence and operations, it 
was my privilege to get a new congregation and church started 
at Pleasant Unity. Here too my more modest brother labored. 
The German pastor of the Greensburg charge claimed this ter- 
ritory as within his jurisdiction. He preached only German 
at the Ridge church, less than two miles away. But this did 
not meet the wants of the young people here as elsewhere then 
growing every day more English. And as it was important to 
save these from loss to the Reformed, and start a Sunday- 
school in the village, the remedy proposed was an English Re- 
formed church. There were still some excellent people who 
had not strayed as yet from the church of our fathers to the 
Presbyterians, as many had done, and those who felt the call 
were colonized into a new Reformed congregation. It took 
all my personal prudence and influence to avoid an open break 



244 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



between Dr. Hacke and his ardent followers, and the equally 
kindly portion of his members who for the best good of the 
church favored this English movement. Had more of this 
kind of work been done judiciously, earlier and at other places 
in Westmoreland, we might have saved great loss of material 
that has gone to enrich others. 

In this instance, the party jealousy between German and 
English soon healed up. The neat new church was built and I 
was asked to preach the dedication sermon to a happy people. 
The same service was also done for the new congregation and 
church at Pine Run in northern part of the county. So too, at 
Scottdale, it was also my pleasant duty to preach the sermon at 
the dedication of the new Reformed church. These, besides the 
dedicatory sermons at Youngstown and earlier at Irwin are 
among my historical services in what is now Westmoreland 
classis. Levansville, Somerset county, was also at the time I 
preached at the dedication of the new church there in the same 
classis, but belongs now to Somerset Classis. So, for several 
in Armstrong and Butler counties of what is now also in the 
Pittsburgh Synod. It has just made me remember some of 
these, by an invitation from Rev. D. I. Schaeffer and his peo- 
ple to join in the golden jubilee service of the Salem congre- 
gation above Kittanning, where I preached at the cornerstone 
laying fifty years ago. And the dedication at Wilkinsburg 
must not be forgotten. The pleasure of recalling these to mem- 
ory may justify the mention. And it may possibly help in some 
case to correct the loose statements sometimes written for veri- 
table history, rather than minister to vanity. It is not a claim 
that "I have done it" ; like the rooster in the new illustrated 
German ABC book, strutting solitary near a hen's nest with 
one egg in it, and cackling the news to the world, as much as 
to say, I have done it. The author of the book claimed that 
illustration as the main merit of the new edition of his won- 
drously achieved literary work. 



XIX. 



Corresponding Delegate 

And Formation of Our General Synod. 

T? XCHANGE of delegates between our eastern and west- 
4 ern Synods obtained for some twenty years or more, 
that is from the early forties until after the formation of the 
General Synod. Each Synod annually elected one of its own 
members to attend the next meeting of the other Synod and to 
bear its fraternal greetings to that body. It was made my duty 
and so fell also to my privilege, while a member of the Ohio 
Synod to be sent as the representative of the west to the East- 
ern Synod, which met that year, 1857, in Allentown, Pa. Of 
course we never felt strange in those meetings with our breth- 
ren east, among whom we were most cordially welcomed and 
kindly treated. Yet there were differences in synodical feel- 
ings and practices between east and west as to "new measures" 
for the conversion of members instead of religious train- 
ing by catechization in educational preparation for confirmation 
and reception into the communion of the church. Reports 
from the east to the west, and reciprocally from the west to 
the east, helped in the way of fraternal intercourse to smooth 
down these differences. The years of such exchange of fel- 
lowship brought growing oneness. 

It so happened in like manner that, after leaving Westmore- 
land classis and holding membership across the Allegheny 
river, further west than formerly, now in the St. Paul's classis 
Which belonged then to the Eastern Synod, they sent me as cor- 
responding delegate from the latter body in the east to the 
Ohio Synod, which met that year in Galion, Ohio. It was in 
some sense like going home here also to my own immediate 
brethren with whom we formerly met for more than ten years 
annually. But even while among them, they always felt shy 
of the eastern man as too churchly in sentiment or not in full 
an equal to a western man. But when coming back to them in 



246 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the name of the mother Synod, they received me as a real 
kinsman; for my labors formerly with them had taken away 
somewhat the offensiveness that sometimes came from Oriental 
delegates who were designated "wise men from the east." 
Such men as Dr. Schaff, Dr. Harbaugh and Dr. Bomberger 
had also been delegated to the west before. After the General 
Synod had been formed and was in full operation, there was 
not the same reason for a continuance of this reciprocal ex- 
change by the several district synods with each other; so that 
Hagerstown Synod, 1868, ordered a discontinuance of the ex- 
change. 

SENT TO THE DUTCH REUNION OF FRATERNAL RELATION. 

When the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterian churches 
charged our branch with drifting towards Romanism, and 
about to fall to pieces by reason of fierce internal controver- 
sies that agitated our borders, they by one consent without no- 
tice given withdrew from the relations held for some years by 
exchange of corresponding delegates. In 1863 however after 
our successful and harmonious celebration with hearty enthusi- 
asm by our whole body, of the three hundredth anniversary 
of the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism, the Dutch 
church of their own accord renewed their fraternal fellowship 
by sending a delegate and overturing us to an exchange. Hold- 
ing with us a common symbol, the Heidelberg Catechism as the 
doctrinal norm of their denomination, their delegate sent in 
1863 was heartily received; and in answer to their overture 
and in renewal of fraternal feeling, our Synod sent me the 
next spring as the first corresponding delegate to their General 
Synod. It met in 1864 in Schenectady, N. Y. They most cor- 
dially welcomed the representative from their now newly be- 
loved sister, the German Reformed church. 

In my address of fraternal greeting, reciprocally renewing 
at their request formally, our correspondence by this exchange, 
they were respectfully told that since the time when they 
had by their own choice withdrawn from former closer inter- 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



247 



course, and broken fellowship with us, we had in the interven- 
ing years been steadily going forward with Christ's work in 
our own unobtrusive way, working steadily out in this broad 
land freely the historical mission divinely given us; that the 
hand of the Lord was plainly leading our denomination into 
more self-conscious apprehension of the Christian verities ; that 
we had come to larger freedom and deeper unity among the 
brotherhood, and were entirely willing if left to our birthright 
untrammelled by outside interference from other churches, to 
share our large success with them and others ; that the divine 
witness to the truth is doubtless the secret of our growth in 
theological science and in practical Christianity. Our church, 
we cited, had meanwhile prospered largely, our boundaries 
were extended especially westward, and we had multiplied in 
number of ministers and members, church institutions, educa- 
tional and charitable, and our home mission field was literally 
without limit — except as to men and means to occupy the open- 
ing places, north, east, south and west. We had the testimony 
of the Lord's favor in the ordeal of persecution which we were 
then suffering for the truth's sake. Our catholic charity was 
however as broad as the whole general fellowship of believers. 

It was my high privilege to bear the greetings of Christian 
brotherhood from our Synod to their venerable body as faith- 
ful fellow witness of true Protestantism in the Reformed fam- 
ily ; and to assure them that we, along with the whole body of 
those who claim an inheritance among the redeemed of the 
Lord, will continue to stand firm in the faith once delivered to 
the saints. "Brethren, when you come to know us better, you 
will learn to love us more ; because we have not been selfish or 
stagnant, but our advance has been under the glorious cross, 
the banner of apostolic faith. We hail you heartily once more 
as our brethren in the Lord !" 

At the conclusion of my brief address, a most heartsome 
reply came from the president of that General Synod, with a 
commission to bear back to our brethren the cordial recipro- 
cation of Dutch fraternal regards, and prayers for our future 



248 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



success. Then more than a dozen members came over to grasp 
my hand and extend personal friendship. Quite a number of 
them expressed open surprise that one from the German breth- 
ren could speak good English. They had indeed thought in 
their general ignorance of us, that our church was in language 
as well as in name at that time yet, prevailingly German. It 
was, however, the last year we bore that title in our official 
name. We became thereafter by action of the General Synod, 
1863, "The Reformed Church in the United States." The 
Dutch brethren had also learned a lesson from us while we 
were discussing it in Synod and classes, changed their name 
from 'The Protestant Reformed Dutch Church" to "The Re- 
formed Church of America." And it took them less time to 
make the change than it did in our case ; for their. General 
Synod meets annually, while ours is triennially. Thereafter 
the exchange of delegates was to be between the two General 
Synods. That is to show how nearly we are alike, in name ; 
with the same catechism, same named church courts ; and yet 
they afterward having offered to unite with us, in the hope 
possibly of swallowing us up bodily, refused at last to be made 
one with us. When it was found that they could not be the 
one, they declined to unite, and so remained only one of two. 
This was at Philadelphia, November, 1874. 

We became then the jilted party after all. It seems the two 
committees appointed to represent the proposed union move- 
ment in the General Synods of the two Reformed branches, at 
a later period also had agreed upon a general basis of union. 
The overture had freely come to us from the Dutch. It had on 
its face a look of honest intent; and was so taken and under- 
stood by us, not as a coquetting for popular effect. After all 
the conferences and earnest discussions a broad and fair plan 
was really settled upon; but for some unforeseen reason the 
other party who had made the formal offer was the fastidious 
and factional one, finally declining the agreement and thus they 
put up a bar to the desired union of the Reformed Church of 
America with the Reformed Church in the United States. It 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



249 



was the old story over; for we had met in conference before 
with nearly similar treatment as you must remember. So 
brief reference is here added in order to set all in the clear. 

Struggling efforts, not always well defined, had been made 
at different times before to bring into some real union these 
two affiliated branches of Protestantism. But early in the 
"seventies" (1874) a definite project was taken in hand to 
make their relation closer than by a mere exchange of corres- 
ponding delegates. It is well remembered in general without 
any definite records of reference, now at hand, that a number 
of us, appointed representatives of all our Synods met with a 
similar commission from the Reformed Church of America in 
the old Race street church, Philadelphia, for the purpose of 
formulating at their request a plan for union. It seemed a 
pleasing work of grace to make if possible one less division in 
Protestantism. But mind and heart were not yet ripened and 
prepared for such completeness. We had thought that the 
Dutch brethren were as much in earnest for the union as we 
were; and perhaps the "old side" of that branch did really 
mean union. The "Young Amsterdam" party however made 
up of material ingrafted from other denominations, mainly 
drawn into the rich congregations by big pay, were of a dif- 
ferent spirit and had notions of their own. It was developed 
in our joint meeting that they thought it necessary to begin 
with rebuking us severely for our supposed Romanizing, and 
for the liturgical party divisions. If what they openly charged 
were true, which we stoutly denied, there was no help for the 
past and little hope for the future. They had known really 
already all that could be known as to our character, before they 
invited us to enter any conventional agreement for union ; and 
now to make a boogy-boo of unsavory rumors raised by ene- 
mies, was simply insulting and fretting. We were not in 
union conference to be lectured into good behavior. 

Their main utterance, variously repeated, was "cutting down 
to the bone," to find our faults and cleanse us from sin, as 
their chief speaker termed it, in order to heal the festering 



250 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



tumor of our charged apostasy from the common faith and 
practice of former times. They harped on this : "We hear 
there be divisions among you," and that these rumors indicated 
unsoundness, leading to heresy; for which we were not then 
and there to be thus put upon trial. 

In vain we argued that we had not come together to hear 
such charges against our branch, but if necessary could defend 
our church from enemies ; and least of all were we to be put to 
an inquisitorial test here at this meeting for ourselves or our 
church, as a condition, at their behest before a union could be 
effected or well considered. The effort in this meeting should 
be not to find fault with each other, or to seek to uncover pos- 
sible old sores made by persecutors or to join with enemies in 
damaging a staunch true church. If our assembling in con- 
ference did not mean that much, then let us try to find out first 
of all fraternally the common agreements in faith and practice 
as the object of a mutual oneness in Christ and express it so; 
it certainly was not the object of our fraternal interchange of 
Christian courtesy, to pick faults and make unfounded charges 
affecting the good name of brethren. 

Lacking thus the proper spirit of true charity on the part of 
these brethren personally, and finding it entirely profitless to 
continue at irreconcilable variance, after several sessions of 
such discussion, I made a brief argument on something like 
the above considerations, and then moved to adjourn sine die. 

We who had come heartily praying and hoping for union, 
were not on our side to be unduly subjected to antecedent hu- 
miliation. The other party then felt that they had gone too far 
and could not afford, thus summarily to dissolve the commis- 
sion on such an issue as they had joined; and so they finally 
sought for an easier way out. Only they were now fully con- 
vinced that our branch of the Reformed church could not be 
absorbed as a whole into theirs, as an easy way for us to' 
escape ugly charges and harsh treatment. They could not 
gain and retain the absolute control of the whole proposed 
united body. See article in Reformed Church Review, by 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



F. K. Levan, April, 1875. Their scheme came to nothing then, 
only to be renewed a few years since in another movement 
from the same side as was above mentioned, apparently now 
no more sincere, as is seen from our later experience also, in 
the same direction and with no more good faith. Their second 
offer to unite was hailed meekly indeed, with acceptance in 
full vote by our ecclesiastical courts ; and what was again be- 
gun with such good promise, by their grossly discourteous re- 
fusal to make good their offer, eventuated in a like abortive re- 
sult. "Young Amsterdam," the "foreign," not native born, 
element, in the Dutch church, was again in the saddle and 
came off victorious in the final action. To my mind it is 
doubtful, whether this party in the Reformed Church of 
America with its woful lack of historical catholicity, will ever 
consent heartily to the marriage of these two branches of 
Protestantism — until they are converted to a broader charity. 

The General Synod was not formed till late in the fall of 
1863. In January of that year however fell the Tercentenary 
of the Heidelberg Catechism. Preparations for celebrating 
that jubilee had been made by the two Synods then existing, 
both of which heartily joined in the general plan for a histori- 
cal revival of the old faith and restoration as far as possible of 
the old customs of the Reformed church. It was felt that a 
common central body was necessary to give efficiency to the 
historical life and growth of this whole side of the Reforma- 
tion. The missionary work was offering large promise; and 
the intensive powers must work out the divine consciousness. 

Much had been done for doctrinal teachings along the old 
lines of truth. And the co-ordinate relation of cultus was 
striving to find more real expression. For fifteen years there 
had been a powerful committee at work studying the subject 
and preparing a liturgy for this branch of the church. It had 
produced birth-throes of great significance. The formation 
of the General Synod just at that time, more than anything 
going before, was needful to give developing freedom to the 
inwardness of this order of grace. Intense struggles were 
R-18 



252 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



made towards the realization of the ground aim even then not 
too well self understood. 

Getting ready for the Tercentenary took several years of 
nebulous efforts. The east and the west must mingle and 
know each other more heartily. The centrifugal and centrip- 
ital must unite. Persons who live now in this generation and 
who did not experience the differences of those former times, 
cannot know the advance made from the middle of the former 
century. A personal letter from Dr. Harbaugh to me, reflect- 
ing some stirring things in the early sixties is here reproduced 
in part and shows part of the earnest work of the great prob- 
lem. From his side, it reveals strongly earnestness of heart. 
It is not partisan, but honestly open, and for the general good. 
His fraternal word was from the eastern committee, to me, 
chairman of the western committee, both becoming one in the 
higher unity of the whole Reformed church. 

Lebanon, May ist, 1862. 
Rev. and Dear Bro : As the meeting of your Synod is approaching, 
I think it my duty to write you in regard to the proposed tri-centenary, 
as you will no doubt have to report. Thus far there are 13 who have 
promised contributions, of whom three are German, Hundeshagen, 
Ebrard and Herzog. But others are expected to answer favorably — in- 
deed have written for information. We may expect three more, I think, 
from the Fatherland. Thus far we have only one from the Western 
Synod, Dr. Kieffer. This is not our fault, as you know I urged you to 
get three, at least. You have partially declined. But I hope you will 
yet consent. At your Synod you could, on consultation, fix on any one 
you may select. 

Your Synod will not meet again before the finale. Ought you not to 
complete all your arrangements at this Synod. You no doubt intend to 
make an effort to secure free-will offerings. All the details ought to be 
arranged, so as to get the Classes to work. The matter ought to be 
brought right up to every member, man, woman and child. I have no 
doubt much can be done in this way. 

You will no doubt think of all that is needed, and excuse me for 
calling it to mind. If you concoct a good plan of details, for which you 
have admirable talent, we can adopt the same plan. Great care ought 
to be taken to make the plan of securing free-will offerings practical, 
simple and effective. 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



253 



I hope you will inform me, as soon as Synod is over, of what you 
have done, and what you desire and suggest, so that I can lay the mat- 
ter before our committee. 

I see in the last Missionary that some one suggests action on the Lit- 
urgy question. It would be unfortunate if the Western Synod should 
take any action which might embarrass the completion of the work. 
You have seen in Dr. B.'s articles that he assumes that Synod wants 
what he wants. But evidently Synod has not so expressed itself. It has 
distinctly said that it shall be revised on its own principles. When we 
met all were of one mind on that point, except Dr. B. He assumed, 
just as he does in his articles, that Synod wants "Hamlet's part" taken 
out of the play — all that makes it a Liturgy, as distinct from a new 
Book of Prayers. The committee was not willing to out-vote him and 
go on with the work. But preferred to let it go back again to Synod. 
They appointed Dr. Nevin to draw up a report which should give 
clearly the two schemes of a Liturgy, so that Synod could say which 
they want — so that the committee could have the principle on which 
they are to proceed decided. But B. makes the impression that the 
committee is arraying itself against the Church in this matter — assuming 
that the Church and he are of the same mind. The committee wants 
to know whether Synod wants his plan, or that in which all the com- 
mittee agree. 

Dr. N. at our last meeting last week read his report, 70 pages of 
letter paper — a most able, clear and conclusive paper. This is to be 
published as the committee's report to Synod, and first to be laid before 
the Church. Now all this shows that the committee wish to act in the 
light, and wish the Church to act in the light. 

It is the mind of the committee that many changes are required in 
the details of the work ; but they are all agreed but B. that the revision 
should be in its own spirit, and not revolutionary. I know that you and 
I think alike on the whole subject, and I have no doubt you will use 
your influence to prevent any action which might embarrass the inter- 
est. For this reason alone, I thought proper to advise you of the status 
of the matter. Yours truly, 

H. Harbaugh. 

OF THE GENERAL SYNOD. 

Perhaps as well here as anywhere record may be made of 
another chain of historical facts. Along in the '40's there was 
a triennial convention established between our own two Syn- 
ods then existing, and a third party, the "Protestant Reformed 
Dutch Church." It was originated in the interest of church 



254 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



union ; directly intending to draw more closely together the 
two Reformed branches in this country holding the Heidelberg 
Catechism. But it never called out much enthusiasm, nor 
awakened real love as we have just seen in the direction of a 
true inward union ; as by its guarded terms it could not to- 
gether do common general church work. The Dutch Re- 
formed, finding they could not in this way at that early day 
swallow us up, soon therefore informally withdrew in the 
early beginning of that age of bitter controversy then coming 
on; and soon after the meeting at Harrisburg, August 8, 1844, 
where Dr. Nevin preached the great sermon on Catholic Unity, 
our eastern and western Synods were all that was left of the 
once hopeful convention. The last triennial meeting of these 
our two Synods was held, as is remembered, in the late sum- 
mer perhaps of 1858 or 1859 ( ?), at Winchester, Va. The at- 
tendance and interest at these conventions had both become 
small. Drs. Schaff and Gerhart with a few others from the 
east, and Drs. P. C. Prugh and myself with scant numbers of 
others from the west, whose names cannot now be recalled 
without reference to records, were in attendance. Dr. Schaff 
was president and G. B. Russell, secretary. This meeting, the. 
last of the triennial convention, made itself a name however 
and left special historical fruit behind it, by formulating a 
scheme for a more real union in a General Synod of our Re- 
formed Church in the United States. This plan was after- 
wards approved by our two Synods and adopted by their class- 
es. Delegates were appointed from all the classes accordingly 
to meet in Pittsburgh, Pa., in November, 1863, the tercenten- 
ary year of the Heidelberg Catechism. At this meeting the pro- 
posed General Synod was organized, under an amended con- 
stitution. Rev. Dr. J. W. Nevin was its first president. 

By the old constitution each of the two Synods was anomo- 
lously equally supreme in all the powers of the church as re- 
gards government, general church work, appeals, theologi- 
cal teachings, missions, publications and educational institu- 
tions. The organic law had to be changed therefore some- 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



255 



what so that the central authority should have a common head 
and rest in one body alone. This change had been bunglingly 
made previous to the first meeting of the General Synod, as 
directed by the two supreme Synods by a joint committee of 
which Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger was chairman of the Eastern, 
and G. B. Russell of the Western Synod. Their report on the 
changes was a weak compromise, a mere make-shift, a patch- 
work affair to be used for trial — instead of a clean cut new in- 
strument projected on the central basis for the new supreme 
body. The dualism still largely left in the constitution re- 
quired soon amendments, which however yet leaves the organic 
law unsatisfactory in its design for central powers and func- 
tions. Efforts to revise and amend, or frame a new constitu- 
tion time and again failed to meet the felt want. It must work 
out its ideal success from the center of a true inward unity. 
But since 1863, the General Synod is at least established by 
common consent for the oneness of the whole church. It has 
been my high privilege to help actively in its formation and to 
stand to its support when discontent from either party tried at 
times to break up this common center of authority and church 
unity. 

THE DAYTON DEBATE. 

What had probably scared the Reformed Dutch and others 
of the American churches, was the deep earnestness with 
which our Reformed branch grappled the historical church 
questions that came up for settlement in the middle and latter 
half of the past century. Most of them did not for a good 
while seem to know that there was anything vital to engage 
their serious attention or wake them up from their long, quiet 
theological sleep. It was at our expense mainly that these 
living issues were joined. Among others was that of general 
Cultus. 

High water mark in the liturgical discussion, which first be- 
gan in our church in 1845, was reached at the General Synod 
held at Dayton, Ohio, 1866. It is still somewhat fresh for mem- 



256 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



ory after forty years. Two reports on the subject of the liturgy 
were formulated and submitted with broadly divergent conclu- 
sions. That of the majority of the special committee favored 
the continued permissive use of the Eastern Synod's Provi- 
sional Liturgy, 1857 and 1862, in trying to get back to the old 
custom of the church ; the other, that of the minority, in sym- 
pathy with the Western Liturgy, opposed all liturgical worship 
of the people for the present as foreign to the western spirit 
and animus. 

Dr. J. W. Nevin, who had labored for fifteen years with pre- 
paration of the liturgical committee's work, opened the general 
discussion in favor of the majority report. It was of course a 
master's argument of the whole question well studied, of litur- 
gical service in the sacramental spirit belonging to cultus from 
the beginning; and which of right stood in with the church's 
historical growth to the advanced present. It was not printed 
in full. 

Then Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger, who was also of the liturgi- 
cal committee but on the opposing side, a shrewd and strong 
debater, replied in an elaborate effort to answer what was ad- 
vanced by the affirmative side. Lie had helped to prepare the 
book. He had also at first written strong articles in favor of 
its use. Now he stood however in the forefront with negative 
forces. Next in the course of the debate, came Dr. H. Har- 
baugh with an affirmative speech, giving a general analysis of 
the liturgical idea in the public worship and showing its power 
in the sanctuary service, claiming its inward harmony in- 
grained in the life of our people from the Reformation onward. 

On the negative next followed in order Dr. J. H. Good, who 
in his characteristic method wove a strong ad captandum ar- 
gument against many of the historical points just made. Dr. 
Thos. G. Apple came in succession with a grand and popular 
speech for the free privileged use of the liturgy in worship 
affording the people their share. This was a practical plea 
for applying the truth, as a prepared service. 

Next following him came Dr. G. W. Williard who with con- 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



257 



siderable force argued speciously against what he claimed the 
whole west did not want. He repeated in ringing changes 
what was set out in the "minority report." Hackneyed objec- 
tions to any formal service were strongly reiterated. He 
claimed to know and understand the anti-liturgical spirit of the 
western part of the church. It was made my turn now to lift 
a voice from the middle Synod. Standing in decided modera- 
tion between the extremes, it was proper to show that the peo- 
ple's wants must be provided for in public worship. If the new 
measure brethren of the west, feeling a need for regulated 
worship, had in their efforts produced an abortive or abso- 
lutely still born child, we cannot let them prevent the living 
Provisional book from being freely tried among the people. 
Ten years of the use as provided in free trial have shown its 
vitality. 

Through the Christian ages a divine formative power works 
in the religious worship of men giving form and spirit to the 
divine services. As light was made for the eyes, so the eyes 
are fitted to take in the light; and as air is for the lungs, so 
the lungs are the forms giving men the breath of life. Thus 
we have Old Testament spiritual life in prayers and Psalms. 
John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray, and Christ taught 
the apostles to pray after the manner of the Lord's Prayer, a 
truly spiritual training and practice, as in the New Testament 
examples all through. St. John in Revelations gives glimpses 
of liturgical forms in the worship of heaven. So we plead for 
the free right of the people taking part in the prayers as well 
as in the hymns prepared in forms for the public assembly of 
the saints. This belongs to the spiritual outflow of the Word 
and Sacraments in the church of the present and future. So 
let the people be trained. 

The debate lasted for two days. It was participated in by 
many earnest men on each side for or against the two reports. 
Dr. Rust, Dr. Kieffer, Dr. Rupley, Dr. Stern and others, as 
well as by some eloquent elders. It forms a historical point 
for memory, reference and profitable study. Through it all 



255 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



the Spirit of the Lord was present as the living Christ in the 
Church. 

In the main debate Dr. Nevin was pleading for the return to 
the old Reformation idea of sacramental grace, in baptism and 
the holy supper as represented in the liturgical offices, when 
one of the opposition interrupted him by asking, "Doctor, how 
do you rationally explain the 'Taufgnade/ as you call it?" 

Answer, "I don't explain it ; all effort at that is rationalism." 

Another question followed: "Why then do you hold and 
teach it?" 

Answer: "Because / believe it, though I cannot understand 
it. Faith takes what God gives." 

Gen. McCook in the back part of the house said to a friend : 
"That Dutchman had better kept within his bomb-proof." 

When Dr. Harbaugh was presenting the objective force of 
the idea of divine worship, a zealous opponent said: "You 
liturgical men take people into church communion in a mere 
formal way, without conversion." As quick as thought Dr. 
Harbaugh asked, "How do you take them in?" Rev. Max 
Stern answered, "We convert them first," to which Dr. H. 
rejoined, "We leave that work to the Holy Spirit." 

The east had first the "Provisional Liturgy," produced 
1857 for free trial as the result of twelve years' labor by the 
whole committee. This was revised by order of the Eastern 
Synod, and was published (see action at Easton, Pa.) as the 
Revised "Order of Worship," 1862, before the General Synod 
was formed. The west had also provided as an offset what 
was called its Western Liturgy. In Dr. Williard's argument 
he said the west was willing to give up its liturgy, if the east 
would do the same. He thought that argument and proposal 
was fair. Dr. Nevin replied that his proffered settlement was 
like the false mother of the child brought before Solomon. She 
was willing the living child should be cut in pieces, so making 
it no better than her dead baby. The western book was dead 
now, and they were kindly willing to put the living one to a 
similar state of lifeless power. 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



259 



Another argument from the opposition was a proposition 
to take the two books in hand and out of them quickly con- 
struct a new one. This plea was met by the remark of a mem- 
ber of the eastern liturgical committee, to the effect that, the 
mover of that proposition did not seem to have been embar- 
rassed by a dozen years study of the momentous question with 
all its perplexities now before the highest judicatory of the 
Reformed church. In the end of the discussion by a small 
majority, the whole matter was left free for further unlimited 
trial of either eastern or western liturgy. This came only af- 
ter a hard contest, but the overruling was doubtless from the 
divine Presence. 

The battle was broadside after broadside, pro and con, in 
regular succession. Then came a more miscellaneous fire all 
along the line of attack and defence. Nothing was more com- 
pletely ever discussed in open and full debate on any question 
by any of our Synods. At Chambersburg in 1862 when the 
printed report of the Liturgical Committee of the Eastern 
Synod was finally made and discussed, a deep earnestness was 
awakened. So too at York, October, 1866, just previous to 
the Dayton meeting held only two months later, there were 
animated and heavy debates. But the Dayton treatment was 
acknowledged to be the master effort on each side. We are 
glad for its educational effect on our ministers as well as for 
the church in general, and that we had part in the good re- 
ceived by the great discussion ; and glad also for the conclud- 
ing vote of peace at that time. Besides for the fact, that my 
first mission church in Pittsburgh was the first congregation to 
make a fair and successful trial of the Provisional Liturgy, 
when it was issued in 1857. Dr. Harbaugh and others during 
the debate had asked me, as one knowing something of the 
West in general, how the vote at Dayton would stand? My 
reply to him during a recess between the sessions of the debate 
was, "They have the majority against us before the vote makes 
the decision, but historically in every test vote hitherto in this 
movement, God has been on what we call the right side; and 



260 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



we should have faith that it will be again so here." The vic- 
tory was won, and a large stride was made towards progress 
and peace. All the after agitation was only the settling of the 
great storm. 

But "Liturgy or no liturgy" was the battle cry for years. It 
entered into the missionary work and broke up for the time the 
operations of the Board ; so that from 1872 till the completion 
of the "peace movement," the work of missions was a sort of 
elective affinity operation on the one side or the other, accord- 
ing as influences preponderated. On the antiliturgical part, 
the "Ursinus Union" was formed to promote missions in "con- 
stituency" of that interest. To counteract this, in a sort of self- 
defensive way, the "Tri-Synodic Board" was originated. Under 
protest, the principle of this arrangement was not to my liking, 
though a member from the Pittsburgh Synod, which had join- 
ed with the Eastern and the Potomac. This union was in a 
certain sense self-protective as against the burrowing of the 
Ursinus Union. These two partisan interests were for the pur- 
pose of collecting money from those friendly to the one or the 
other, and strengthening this mission, or that, according to its 
affiliation with its particular side. There is now no call what- 
ever for the continued existence of either one at this time. 

A SNARL AVOIDED. 

At the Dayton General Synod one morning, an unfavorable 
remark as reflecting on the German portion of the delegates 
was called up as given in a daily paper, and complaint was 
made of the abuse of the privilege by the paper's re- 
porter. When read, the feelings of many were in- 
tensely stirred. Sharp words fell thick and fast, and 
several methods were proposed to vindicate the Synod 
against such attacks. One was summarily to expel the 
reporter from the table. Another was to refer the matter 
to a strong committee to report a formal method of redress. 
All were warlike and resistent, threatening no little trouble. 
Then Dr. Russell said, "Let us remember that the main object 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 26l 

is to preserve our dignity and the Christian character of the 
General Synod. If we respect ourselves and this body, we 
must not forget to act with gentlemanly dignity and self re- 
spect towards others. That will beget reciprocal rights and 
proper conduct towards us. To forget our first duty to others is 
not the best way to get out of -this (buzzing trouble. We want to 
heal, not tear. By resenting too strongly the ill advised words 
of the reporter will, perhaps turn the gentleman at once into a 
persistent hostile critic with great opportunity to fling ugly 
things at the reverend Synod now in this Christian community 
among whom we are assembled, and from many of whom we 
are receiving noble and generous entertainment. But if we 
deal courteously, the reporter may see his inadvertant mistake 
and show us proper treatment. Even if this be not obtained, 
we can well afford to follow our Lord's example and the rule 
given us for such cases. When He was reviled, He reviled not 
again, and He directed that if we be smitten on one cheek, it 
is safer to turn the other in meek resignation to such persecu- 
tion. St. Paul, when struck in the mouth before the council 
by order of the judge of the court, did not strike back, as a 
Roman citizen could have been justified in self-defence, in re- 
turn for the unjust and cruel asault, but he only appealed the 
case to the Lord to "smite the whited wall." There is a mir- 
acle for faith in such suffering for Jesus' sake. In some such 
spirit therefore, let us pass by this remark, without a formal 
vote or notice of the Synod. This wrong will be forgiven (by 
the worthy German members of this body — and we may go on 
to the more important duties demanding our time and atten- 
tion." 

The whole body semed to approve those words and the gen- 
eral business then went along without further trouble or ruffle 
of feelings. The next morning in the same Dayton paper the 
reporter made a most flattering reference to the high Christian 
character, business ability and good management of the Re- 
formed General Synod ; blessed especially with such mev as 
Dr. Russell, whose wisdom, forethought, prudence, courage 



262 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and broad-minded ability showed him to be chief among the 
other master minds of the assembly. It is not necessary to give 
all the article or the extravagant terms used by our once 
possible enemy who did not even justify his first sensational 
criticism. This record is made just to show that a miraculous 
victory was won by patient endurance and that a happy ending 
of the incident conducted on the Saviour's rule was marked on 
the banner of the cross. 

Perhaps the best of all was the good effect on the offended 
Germans themselves. Their paper endorsed absolutely all 
that the reporter said about Dr. Russell and his good service 
in the Synod, and they took special comfort in the fact that it 
was partly due to the Doctor's inherited maternal German 
blood. "Der Berichterstatter nennt Dr. Russel als den weisen 
dominirenden Mann auf dem Floor der Synode, der die Ange- 
legenenheit zu enien glucklichen Adschlusz gebracht habe. 
Wir wollen das stehen lassen, aber wir mochten die Frage bios 
stellen : 1st Dr. Russel nicht von Haus aus ein Deutscher ?" 

Some Germans came to him afterwards and said : "Dr. Rus- 
sell, we regard you as a fair man ; and where you lead we can 
safely follow without fear of loss or betrayal." 

Elder and Mrs. John H. Shook, of Greencastle, were guests 
at the same table with us. In our recent illness they came to 
renew specially their esteemed kindness and express their fra- 
ternal sympathy reminding us of their "respect and love for 
their sick friend." Among the things remembered was a dis- 
cussion they heard one morning in our absence from the hotel 
breakfast. The waiters of the several tables were comparing 
the delegates stopping there. Each had some prominent man 
at his table. Finally one said that "the red-haired man he 
waited on was counted for the smartest man in the conference," 
and then read that paragraph from the Morning Journal. 

PERILS OF THE TIMES. 

When President Lincoln was shot in the theatre on Good 
Friday, we did not postpone the appointed Easter Communion, 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



263 



and the resurrection hymns were of course triumphant in the 
service. This was noted by a few fanatical patriots as an of- 
fence against good Christian citizenship. A warning was given 
to the pastor and a halter was fastened to the street lamp-post 
opposite our front entrance. The least further indication of 
Democratic sympathy would give use to the rope for hanging 
the preacher. The threat remained for an unpleasantly long 
time before the public ; but the Christian minister was not hung, 
though he lived in terrorem. 

It was for a while dangerous to vote with Democrats. Be- 
cause of that, men were voted out of church. They lost cast 
and influence, their business suffered, friendships were broken, 
families were torn into factions and politics were dangerous 
except on one side. Blessed were they who escaped in those 
days. 

CASE OF VALANDIGHAM. 

It was at the General Synod at Dayton that we first met the 
Hon. C. L. Valandigham. He came to ask that a preacher be 
sent from the Synod to preach on Sunday morning in the Hall 
of the Independent Democratic Congregation. The appoint- 
ment fell to me, and it was a surprise to see so large and fine 
looking an assembly. Rev. Mr. Stake was their regular pas- 
tor. The congregation was made up of prominent people from 
various denominations who were in strong personal sympathy 
with the great Democratic leader of Ohio. He seemed to have 
many warm friends, as well as bitter political enemies. He 
was an eminent man, with a well set jaw when shut. 

It will be remembered that Mr. Valandigham was a member 
of Congress from the fourth Ohio district, representing influ- 
ential wealth and political power. He could have been in or- 
dinary times and conditions what Henry Clay was in Ken- 
tucky, Thos. H. Benton in Missouri, and Simon Cameron in 
Pennsylvania. He was a born leader of men ; tall, finely form- 
ed and of magnetic power, a manly man, a gentleman and 
doubtless a Christian. You could not help but like him per- 
sonally. He differed widely in plan and methods from the ad- 



264 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



ministration leaders in the purpose of ending the rebellion and 
saving the Union, as was his patriotic purpose. He was as 
honest as the best of his opponents. They could not meet fairly 
and answer his bold arguments. Hence, in the majority since 
the South withdrew from Congress, they resorted to force and 
violence to get rid of the "copper-head." 

By a vote of the House he was adjudged an enemy of the 
government, was deprived of his civil rights, condemned to 
perpetual exile and was forthwith summarily banished from his 
native land. The sentence was immediately executed and he 
was sent adrift as a wanderer without a country. It was a 
strained action of the party. 

There was no legal trial, and of course, he had no means of 
appeal. All was done in short meter, so that his friends at 
home could not come to his relief. It was a sad case for him. 
The chief leaders of the rebellion in fact were not finally treat- 
ed with the rigorous penalty that was laid on Hon. C. L. Va- 
landigham. 

After some time he found his way into Canada. England at 
that time could not be safely asked to treat him severely. In 
due time he passed through the United States lines and reached 
his home in Dayton. Behaving as a good citizen, with many 
prominent friends now gathered at his side, the government 
did not attempt to molest him, either from fear of stirring up 
serious local trouble, or from a sense that the penalty already 
laid upon him was too great. In this quiescent state of good 
citizenship he was at the time of the General Synod. 

The large hall of the Independent Democratic congregation 
was well filled for that Sunday morning service. Only about 
one-fourth of the audience were women. The men generally 
had strong features, with character written all over them. They 
seemed devout and attentive rather than merely Democratic in 
politics. Promptly at the hour set the "Great Exile" entered 
and the service began. It was interesting to note the features 
of the men. They were told "If the Son make you free, ye 
shall be free indeed." This freedom is the highest privilege 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



265 



of man, delivering from sin and evil minded fellows. Re- 
ligious and civil freedom lifts men towards God. Good citizens 
thus become everywhere model men. Others yet in sin are 
slaves and tyrants. Only in the service of the Lord is the full- 
est freedom. That may be yours in Jesus Christ. All are 
slaves besides in tyranny of self and sin. The sermon took ef- 
fect and was freely discussed in the circles. 

After the service Mr. Valandigham and a cluster of friends 
gathered around the preacher for a pleasant interview, ending 
with an invitation to meet him and a few prominent gentlemen 
at his home on a set evening that week for a turkey dinner. 
Not long after, however, the great lawyer and persecuted pa- 
triot was retained for the defence in a murder trial. The plea 
set up was accidental killing. In open court before the judge 
and jury, the great advocate was trying to show how by an 
accident the shooting was done. In the manipulation of the 
pistol the distinguished attorney by a mysterious accident dis- 
charged the weapon and its contents entered his own body 
killing him in court, thus ending his trouble with Congress and 
the United States authorities. 

This possibly saved the northern Democrats from falling 
into combined opposition to the strong and often injudicious 
war measures of the extreme other party, prolonging the na- 
tional troubles. The rearrest of the man sentenced to perpetu- 
al exile and another enforcement of banishment would have 
doubtless rallied many friends in the north to his assistance, 
even to insurrection and armed defence. But all such danger 
was now over by the tragic removal of the victim of political 
hate. 

Rev. Dr. J. W. Nevin was soon after elected President of the 
Pennsylvania State Democratic Convention at Harrisburg, 
which gave him the opportunity to address the Northern Dem- 
ocrats in patriotic words and mark out for them a course wiser 
than that of the copper-heads. They became "War Democrats" 
and patriotically helped as a party to defend the government 
in a conservative course, bringing the fraternal strife to an 



266 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



end and restoring the union of the States. The reconstruction 
measures felt the effects of the War Democrats of the North. 
Many of them by sheer force of circumstances were brought to 
act and vote with the conservative Republicans. In doing so 
their party lost, but the government gained strength and for- 
mulated as never before its national powers of self-preserva- 
tion. Only after the war, we became a nation, a self-conscious 
union with ability for rejoining the disrupted parts. All honor 
to the co-operative work of the Democrats and Republicans of 
this grand land of Washington. 

THIS SIDE AND THAT OF THE TWO EXTREMES. 

For and against the liturgy, for instance, the two main con- 
tending parties have been about equally extreme ; and whoever 
was not at the forefront of the one or other procession as a 
banner bearer was likely to suffer from the shafts of both. As 
between ritualistic liturgy and extreme violent anti-liturgy, it is 
perhaps best always to stand firmly on the historical Reformed 
ground ; and never fall over in the tendency either to Episco- 
pacy or Romanism ; nor tend too far to the shallows of Puri- 
tanic fanatical New Measureism. Some characteristics were 
plain to observation in each of these tendencies — not however 
always strongly marked in every personal advocate. If men 
can be better than the motto on their flag, so can there be also 
followers worse than those who hold the ideal banner, in the 
Reformed church. History does not however make its final 
record from either extreme party. 

Highest of the high church party are immensely particular 
as to the ministerial cut of their coat, their place at the altar, 
their strict rubrical ritual, their Pharisaic expressions, and 
their hyper-official absolutions "by the authority I hold." In 
general their congregations are not extra large, nor do these 
grow to great strength and vigor very rapidly. Fact is, they 
do not seem to want as much to incease in numbers as in style. 
They make slow advance in converting the sinning world ; ap- 
parently satisfied that the whole church be made high, rather 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



267 



than catholic, broad and deep and have it spread and extend its 
borders. Some advocated leaving it where it was forty years 
ago, as a mere theological teacher. It is held to be more a sin 
if the members are lax in the ritual, than if they dance, or play 
cards or attend the theatre, or go to the circus, or take part in 
horse races, boat races, ball games involving gambling, or drink 
wine and beer, or absent themselves from the prayer meeting — 
if possibly they have one, or take pleasure trips on the Lord's 
Day, or seek their chief enjoyment in mere fashionable godless 
society as is found to be the case in that sort of church mem- 
bers. If their children do not go to the Sunday-school and 
church and the catechetical class to be trained, they are pretty 
sure to send them to dancing masters. They take self-credit 
for fasting and abstaining from tobacco during Lent. Yet they 
would fiercely resent the charge if it were made by the op- 
posite extremists, that these high church people lack pious 
zeal and Christian life. 

On the other side, that of anti-liturgy, there is an asumed air 
generally of superior spirituality, claiming the only genuine 
conversion, practical piety, and apostolic purity. Formerly 
perhaps more than now, it was taken to be rather a spurious 
sort of religion that was developed from the educational sys- 
tem of catechetical instruction. It would be more freely taken 
as the real pious article if the religion of the applicant for 
church membership came by way of anxious-bench experience. 
A camp meeting was better than Lent and Easter festival 
services. 

"Protracted meetings" for forcing revivals planned on a 
scheme beforehand, were thought by them to be far bet- 
ter than all the festivals of the Church Year in their proper 
season. For any one to undertake and promise simply and 
sincerely on profession of faith, to do what Christ requires — 
without first having in some way and at some known time 
"experienced religion" and felt happy, was clearly a bad sign 
of dead formalism. The willingness to become His disciple 
and do His will seemed to lack vital and godly sincerity, and 
R-19 



268 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



was to be regarded as ominously unspiritual and suspicious of 
the merely carnal. The advocates of the anti-liturgical spirit, 
for the most part, wanted only "heart religion" ; and not to 
worship God in forms of prayers read from a book. Of course 
they admitted it was not just the same sort of dead formalism 
if they sing their prayer like hymns from a book — of the re- 
vival kind, especially if very new ; but the Ten Commandments, 
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Te Deum, the Gloria in Ex- 
celsis, or any other of the old church formulas, could not be 
used without hurt and damage to the true life of devout spir- 
itual worship. As proof of their superior system, they pointed 
to the fact that more of their sort of members could pray "off' 
hand in public," or ask a blessing at the table, and keep up 
family worship, than was common on the other side. They 
also labored, they said, to make inroads on the uncovenanted 
material of the world still outside of the church ; and also to 
increase the numbers of the membership, and to advance the 
banner of the cross. They usually take more readily to young 
people's societies, to extra prayer meetings, and to all the so- 
called moral reforms and evangelistic efforts and schemes — 
whether in the church, or perhaps more freely outside of it. 

Having suffered no small degree of persecution and fierce 
opposition from both these tendencies, we may be yet free to 
say that they each have our charitable sympathy for what is 
good just in so far as they according to light and convictions 
hold the truth in righteousness. My moderation, as Paul ex- 
horts, has become measurably known to all men. And it is not 
vanity to believe that my mediating work has hiad its bearing 
on both sides in the peace movement; which is bringing the 
whole church more into one spirit. The Sunday-school Board's 
work with its order of praying and antiphonal readings 
as now conducted would not have been tolerated less than 
twenty-five years ago ; but it is bringing into use among the 
young of the East and West, the old formulas, general anti- 
phonal reading and responsive worship. Thus, in training all 
the young to take active part, the church is moving with steady 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



269 



power towards the people's participation in the unity of cultus, 
and is gaining self-consciousness in the bond of the General 
Synod. Original chaos, by the movings of the Spirit, was 
brought into order in creation ; and so all the agitations in the 
kingdom of grace led divinely by the same Spirit to final peace 
and glorious harmony in the all beauteous church. 

Years after the adoption of the "Directory of Worship" 
some still use the Revised Order, a book never fully by church 
authority made lawful. Such conditions are evil and destroy 
uniformity in worship. In many places if present as a stranger 
or visitor you are at a loss to know what order to follow — a 
source of confusion for people not acquainted with that con- 
gregation. 

So also anti-liturgical piety, west and east, makes no hearty 
use of the authorized "Directory" which they helped to adopt 
by the General Synod of the whole church. Each such minister 
is an arbitrary law unto himself for variety sake. God help 
the variety. No Creed, nor Lord's Prayer, nor Command- 
ments, nor forms for use at the sacraments, or other set of- 
fices recognized in the acts of worship. That is far from pro- 
moting harmony or practice or piety in Reformed Church 
Lord's Day worship in all the congregations. 

URSINUS SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY. 

Party spirit, begotten of the liturgical movement, is the di- 
rect origin of this school. Resistence to the growing tendency 
in favor of the cultus question gathered a party into broad op- 
position. Failing to halt or control the high church spirit cen- 
tering around the institutions at Lancaster, and in the Eastern 
Synod, the alternative set up its opposition at another point, 
and the eliptical foci tried to hold the two sides of the question 
in steady equipoise. If Dr. Bomberger was not at the head at 
Lancaster (or Lebanon, in the St. John's church, where it is 
said he was willing to accept the liturgy), then the charge of 
Romanizing as to faith and worship must be sustained in 
stout opposition at another point. To this extent there was 



270 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



perhaps a show of historical necessity for organized opposition 
in a school. 

Violent party spirit gave expression and excuse for earnest 
action. One extreme elicits another. The established institu- 
tions were hopelessly on one side. A break was made there- 
fore to revolutionize the situation on the plea that the author- 
ized and established schools were not working in the true in- 
terests of Reformed life and history. Another, more pious and 
true, must be born in the spirit of Ursinus. For the sake of 
better service to the cause, it is willing to endure the cross of 
persecution by those who sit in Moses' seat. Overzealous 
partisans on the other side of church authority, unwittingly 
opened up a way. They claimed then that all benevolent 
moneys collected must be paid to support the powers that be. 
An appeal was taken from a classical action to the General 
Synod asking that body to give the people the free personal 
right to say where money offered as benevolence shall go. In 
this point was involved, as the case was discussed before the 
Synod, whether theological instruction must be supported only 
in the established synodical seminary. In former times and 
even at that time also some ministers were privately instruct- 
ing and training candidates for the work of the ministry. The 
General Synod did not forbid this custom or put an end to the 
practice, so as to confine all such preparation to the seminaries 
under the Synods. But General Synod did not establish any 
theological seminary. Nor did if authorise any to be made to 
order. Nor did it formally indorse or permit any such school. 

It has NO POWER UNDER THE CONSTITUTION TO DO SUCH THING. 

To claim "the authority of the General Synod" therefore as 
giving organic and lawful form for any "School of Theology" 
already existing, misstates the case there acted upon ; which 
was one simply of suffrance in accordance with old custom, 
once almost a necessity, of individual private teaching, exist- 
ing long before seminaries were established under the organic 
law of the Reformed church. It was therefore thought un- 
wise to set aside at that time entirely the old custom, which 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



27I 



even now may in given cases serve a purpose. Besides the cor- 
poration act for Ursinus College there was no formal authority 
for the School of Theology therein mentioned. Permissive ac- 
quiescence only has been the charitable treatment given to it 
by the whole church thus far. 

Be it remembered now once for all, that this liberal kindness 
did not make this extra constitutional school a theological sem- 
inary of the Reformed church. There has been no power any 
where under organic law formerly to make it such, until it 
agrees to come under synodical or constitutional conditions 
made and provided for that purpose. It has not sought to be 
so recognized as previously established. It came into its pres- 
ent existence altogether as an abnormal product of party feel- 
ing; and its pious, earnest and well meant labors cannot fully 
legitimate its existence, as an institution independent of former 
synodical control. It is in fact a close corporation, self-perpet- 
uating for its own party purposes, clear and confessed, under 
a "constituency" openly cultivating rivalry to the old seminary 
of the Synod to which it makes no official report, nor profess- 
edly owes the least lawful allegiance. It claims as a merit not 
to be under such laiv, and because of this fact bids for a 
larger "constituency" in the whole church. Its life depends on 
party food. 

In the Philadelphia Classis, in its early stages, I openly ad- 
vised its promoters to put themselves possibly under the East- 
ern German Synod, as the only one within reach ; and then, if 
any good is to be gained as a corrective antidote of real or 
supposed abuses in the mother Synod's teaching, they could 
under church law and order work for increase of the ministry. 
Irregular birth however does not forfeit or destroy even a bas- 
tard's life ; for like Jephthah it can be used, but its hasty pious 
vows too strongly made bring trouble at home. Good inten- 
tions and sound teachings are not to be despised. The two 
tendencies will some day be united, as they ought soon to be, 
in one grand seminary. The good that is in both deserves to 
be fostered and preserved. Under the coming new constitution 



272 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



it has now a formal status more than it ever had by any resolu- 
tion of the General Synod. 

But now this school is becoming quite self-assertive. Its late 
manifesto, issued apparently with official sanction, 1905, makes 
some points strong. We bid it Godspeed, if it will "make its 
teaching of doctrine square with the catechism." Objecting, as 
the same paper states, to the higher "courts overriding consis- 
tories and congregations," seems to assume that there is such 
a wrong thing running habitually in our church government; 
and that it is specially needful for such a school of theology 
to teach candidates for the ministry courageous rebellion 
against normal rulings of the higher courts in church affairs. 
That is to say : as above the Synod's and General Synod's, the 
people are the source of our ecclesiastical supreme law and 
authority. In so far, it assumes that contrary to our organic 
law, "independent Congregationalism" pure and simple is the 
divine and primitive order of church government. That is 
plainly alien to the Reformed life. According to our church 
indeed, the divine constitution comes from above, and existed 
in the kingdom of heaven now at hand before the converted 
thousands at Pentecost "were added to the church" as some- 
thing real. Forces from below making law from themselves 
upward, run to heresy and schism, which tend inevitably ulti- 
mately to rebellion. The higher powers are not wrong always 
nor generally, only bad as above said, for overriding what 
comes more purely and true from below. A pious "constitu- 
ency" should not for party sake be so misled. 

Under the new constitution there will be a place, according 
to the compromise provision of the "peace compact," for this 
special school of theology. But even then, it is not standing 
"along with the other seminaries," until it becomes in spirit 
and in form like them in teaching and in obedience to the con- 
stitution. If it wants to draw men and money from the con- 
gregations at large for good theology, it must not cultivate a 
"party constituency." If its spirit is more genuinely Reformed 
more christologically pious, more trustworthy than Lancaster, 



CORRESPONDING DELEGATE. 



273 



then the historical necessity that they say called for its exist- 
ence will be amply vindicated by a true regard for law, obeying 
Synod's jurisdiction. Its first parents and sustainers are dead. 
If it was conceived and born in the sin of party spirit, it needs 
regeneration and a real Reformed life now. 

Good will and peace do not require an ever watchful guard 
in favor of settling their young ministers in any and every part 
of the church territory as a healing church remedy. Nor when 
any of these depart hence and vacate a place once held by a 
particular partisan, it is not necessary for piety and godliness 
to keep the door safe till one of the very same school can be 
foisted into the conquered territory — to farm the ground in the 
interest of a partisan school, that aims above all else to increase 
its "constituency/' 



XX. 



At Washington 

f N the fall meeting of the Tri-Synodic Board, 1877, it was 
*- resolved to establish a mission at Washington. When the 
brethren had come to that meeting in Harrisburg, it transpired 
that the plan was already cut and dry. Favorable action was 
taken; then an appropriation of $1500 a year for its support 
was proposed. This was an unheard of sum in those days of 
hitherto small things for a missionary's salary. I opposed it 
stoutly, on the ground, that by this fact alone the people would 
be shocked to the extent of general opposition to the new en- 
terprise. Finally on my motion an amendment prevailed cut- 
ting down the sum for salary to $1200. It was then openly 
stated that "it would be a sin to send" the man (mentioning 
him by name) whom they had intended for the place, at such 
a paltry salary. And moreover to prove their sympathy for 
him, they turned in and elected me at the same sinfully ( ?) 
small appropriation to become the missionary for Washing- 
ton. First taking it only as an argument ad hominum joke, 
however it was found later a burden was laid upon me in 
downright earnest. Though not in any pastorate just at the 
time, yet it was important as supposed for me to remain at 
Pittsburgh then, till those three or four churches of which 
mention has been made before partly in my care, Mansfield, 
Gerty's Run, Mt. Washington and Allegheny, were possibly 
put on their feet. The argument was used against this that it 
was only a plan to make a permanent place for myself in one 
of these. Therefore, partly to prove this false, the Washing- 
ton work was accepted. The others only unofficially in hand, 
could be left to themselves. As it afterwards turned out, all 
these projected Reformed church interests slipped away; and 
only sorrow remained that we had not held them in grasp. 




FIRST PASTOR GRACE MISSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., 1877-1880. 
Educator, Author, Editor, Publisher, 20 Years. 



AT WASHINGTON. 



275 



This then brought me to Washington January 1st, 1878, as 
the "first English missionary of our church" in that capital 
city. The mission, with the names of seventeen persons (some 
of whom never took real part), gathered by the superintendent, 
was organized a short time before by a committee of the 
Maryland Classis. The General Synod at Dayton twelve 
years previously had proposed to send me to look after our 
church interests in the national capital. This plan after the 
Synod was side-tracked by a party who wanted to be head 
master. It had now in formal call been renewed and put upon 
me ; and to undertake the duty was at that time no small self- 
denial for myself and family from material and social consid- 
erations. It broke up my home and made a forced sale of my 
property a necessity which cost me a heavy loss. Prayer and 
faith were never more real to me in going to any appointed 
work. 

Washington as a mission field then had its peculiarities. Its 
reigning spirit was not in favor of vital religion. Even pro- 
fessing Christians who go to live there seem to leave earnest 
piety at their old homes. Our congressmen belonging to the 
Reformed church, of which we then had four or five in the 
House, have something else to do than to help a new mission. 
Not more than three, all of those of personal acquaintance, too, 
according to memory, ever came to our hall. Clerks in govern- 
ment places are, if anything, still more careless, and less in- 
clined to give attention to religious duties. Some did for a 
little while come to our place, but it was only, it seemed, to 
enlist our aid in securing them better appointments from the 
government. The miscellaneous people, not very spiritual, 
like Galio, cared "for none of these things." 

The Reformed people who were few and came occasionally to 
services had been told that "the salary of the preacher and the 
cost of a new church" would be furnished by the friends at 
large, if only these people themselves would lend their names 
for a metropolitan organization of the Reformed church. This 
was a cause of weakness and troubled the mission from the 



2j6 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

start; and that type set then was there a long time. The few 
people generally were not enthusiastic in the new project; as 
most of them regarded it not so much to their spiritual advan- 
tage as in some way for the credit of the Reformed church at 
large to have a name in the national capital. If they paid the 
hall rent and attended sometimes, at the services, it was as 
much as could be expected of them. And the idea that it was 
their duty and privilege to be present at "the services regular- 
ly" and work and pray for the cause, was a new revelation to 
the careless grown members, who had long lived there without 
church connection. A great deal of pastoral visiting had 
therefore to be done among them for the return of a very small 
amount of regular attendance at church service secured there- 
by. But this matter was susceptible of improvement ; and to 
a good degree it was made to grow more favorable. There 
were indeed some most excellent people found among the new 
membership soon added. 

Liturgical, some to the highest degree, and others anti-litur- 
gical to the lowest extreme point in the scale, and "mittel- 
mass" people also, were all to be pleased and satisfied. My 
former and well tried system of moderation in the use of the 
service in other missions was put in practice here from the be- 
ginning, and for nearly a year all went well enough. We had 
besides the full Communion and festival days services, regu- 
larly the Invocation, singing the Gloria, reading the Gospel 
and Epistle lessons for the day, the Collect, the Creed, the 
General Prayer (with part of the absolution), the Sermon, the 
closing free prayer ending with the Lord's Prayer, singing, 
Doxology and the Benediction. Few other places then had 
as much liturgy in worship. This was however too much for 
some, and in general quite enough to satisfy all — till certain 
influences from abroad in the "high church" interests began 
to create distraction. The preaching services were unexcep- 
tionally well liked, and as even the ritualistic set repeatedly 
said, "grew better and better." The Sunday-school, which 
though small at first, because our people had few children, 



AT WASHINGTON. 



277 



was steadily increasing. We had the beautiful third service 
of the Harbaugh Hymn-book, and we taught the catechism, 
and took up collections. We held midweek free prayer 
meetings. 

But relatives from abroad stirred one woman and three 
men to clamor for the "zvhole liturgy, word for ivord as it is 
in the book" ; which was then unrevised and not yet adopted 
by the General Synod for the whole church. What existed 
was not law only permissive, not binding in use ; and besides it 
was objectionable in absolute fullness to a very considerable 
majority of the members. Prudently the pastor took the 
ground that the money given for the support of this mission 
came in general not only from members friendly, but also 
from those who were opposed, to the liturgy; and as persons 
for whom the gospel services and means of grace are here in- 
tended were also on both sides of the question, it were wiser 
and better as well as more in the spirit of Christian charity to 
try to satisfy all parties, by the use of the main and moderately 
large part of the liturgical service, than to enforce its use upon 
all in full. For some time this plan prevailed; the attendance 
increased, new members were added by baptism and confirma- 
tion. Of the only four who were most urgent for the absolute- 
ly full service, one had been raised an Episcopalian, whose 
uncle was a high church minister in the denomination. He 
had been heard to advocate the custom of having consecrated 
bread continually standing exposed on the altar. Another was 
raised a Baptist, but had married into a high church family. 
A third was a man, who had been tried on a charge for murder 
and escaped the penalty of the civil law by a legal technicality ; 
he especially wanted the absolution in full every time. The 
fourth came from a quarrelsome family and has since with all 
the other three left the Reformed church and united with the 
Presbyterians where there is no liturgy at all. After these 
people had their desire for ousting me and getting a new pas- 
tor with the full liturgy, they all went into other churches. In 
fact their liturgical pastor, my first successor, himself passed 



27B 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



over to Episcopacy too, and took with him more members than 
he had ever added to our mission. 

Reports had been sent abroad by the high church partisans 
that the Washington missionary had "weakened" on the litur- 
gical question. And then from those outside self-appointed 
counsellors it was advised that the consistory by formal vote 
"instruct him to use the liturgy in full." Three of the five 
members of the consistory were known to be of the ritualistic 
party. The president however refused to entertain such pro- 
posed unauthorized action which only was an assumed power 
to regulate his ministerial functions that were in no sense re- 
ceived from them or officially held subject to their will. But 
the consistory's majority of one demanded that in the public 
prayer the pastor should use "all the liturgy word for word," 
as contained in the "Order of Worship," a book then of no 
binding authority, not yet having been adopted by the General 
Synod or any general church court. 

The pastor held therefore, that for prudential considerations 
in the present conditions of the mission, no law bound him to 
such rigid use, and that the peace and prosperity of the church 
fully justified him in omitting certain words, phrases and parts, 
if objectionable to three fourths of the whole congregation. 
Their proposed action to bind him, he declined to entertain, 
in proceedings of consistory, and ruled the motion to bind him 
repeatedly out of order ; on the ground that they had no lawful 
power to coerce him in his official administration as to divine 
service in the ministry to which he was ordained by the classis. 
If his honest judgment was at fault, or if he failed in any offi- 
cial or personal duty, the case could be taken to his classis for 
consideration ; but it did not belong to the consistory to con- 
trol and regulate the pastor's ministry received from a higher 
court. For a similar reason, no consistory have the lawful 
right and power to override their minister by trying arbitrarily, 
if on the other side of the question to prohibit the use of litur- 
gical service in the church. Even since the General Synod has 
adopted the Directory of Worship there are no absolute com- 



AT WASHINGTON. 



279 



mands for absolute observance either way. Liturgical pastors 
do not force it "word for word," if it gives offence ; nor anti- 
liturgical men ignore all its decent directions continuously. 

They were advised then to draw up a complaint and petition 
the Board of Missions to the effect that if the pastor did not 
use the book "in full, word for word," they should remove him 
and send them another man. This was not the voice of one- 
tenth of the membership. It so happened that when this paper 
was presented the pastor was in the meeting of the Tri-Syn- 
odic Board, being as yet a member of the Pittsburgh Synod. 
He claimed that the classis should act on this. The matter 
was put however into the hands of the Executive Committee 
of the Board ; and there was influence enough from outside of 
Washington brought to bear to induce the majority of the 
committee to consent to this unconstitutional dictation — thus 
condemning my prudent course as a minister for its very wis- 
dom and large success. In the preceding nine months covering 
the time of their complaint, twenty-six new members had been 
received, more than doubling the original number, and others 
were in near prospect. This gain also was not in membership 
of transient clerks holding government orifices, but was of an- 
chored citizens, with property and influence. Anti-liturgical 
persons already in the church had been won over and were 
satisfied to use the large amount of the service provided as 
above stated. A spiritual prayer meeting was one of the 
earlier fruits, and the catechism was taught the children and 
people. 

More than three-fourths of the congregation however, were 
in blissful ignorance as yet of any trouble or dissatisfaction 
from within ; and with the exception of the small clique men- 
tioned, not a breath of discord revealed any disturbance. The 
pastor explained all this to the executive committee of the 
Mission Board — told them the mission- was growing all right — 
and his experience and knowledge of the case was better than 
their one-sided information from partisans, while his past suc- 
cess here and in five other missions ought to count for some- 



28o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



thing as to ability to manage, and all this was in favor of let- 
ting the case work itself out ; that the Board also was under 
solemn contract to the missionary for two full years commis- 
sion as was the rule, and if this work were not going right 
here, the classis could hold the pastor to duty. It was especial- 
ly a bad plan to interfere now, on account of good new mem- 
bers about to come in, and the fine prospects of getting a 
church property cheap ; the particulars of which could not then 
be made generally known. (See page 282.) 

Notwithstanding all this, two members of the committee 
came to Washington clandestinely and without notice to the 
pastor, began, as they said, to "settle the difficulties in the mis- 
sion." by smelling about privately from house to house among 
the people. Their coming and their alarming statements about 
internal "difficulties" were news and a great surprise not only 
to the most of the members, but to the pastor himself. Accident- 
ally he fell upon their track the first day of their operations and 
traced them among families whose first knowledge of any 
trouble was from these peacemakers themselves ! At that time 
the Board's treasury was indebted to the missionary on back 
salary about $1 100. One of the conditions under which the place 
had been taken in charge provided for regular and prompt 
quarterly payment; another was the standing rule that no ap- 
propriation could be reduced in less than two years. This was 
to shield a man who would have to break up his previous rela- 
tions in accepting a mission call and settle in a new place at his 
own risk and pecuniary loss. This limit of two years had not 
expired ; and yet they ordered the pastor to quit the field forth- 
with; and that too, before paying him honestly the large bal- 
ance of salary backstanding ; and if their order to quit were not 
at once obeyed the salary was to be reduced to one-half. That 
is the sort of moral and financial sense of honor of that com- 
mittee ; and it is evidence of their further unfitness and blun- 
dering imprudence in stirring up bad feeling among the al- 
most unanimously peaceful people, who knew of no trouble 



AT WASHINGTON. 



till the committee told them they had come to settle this mat- 
ter of "difficulties" ! 

"Obey them who sit in Moses' seat," is my rule. So the 
following Sunday morning after service, the pastor notified the 
congregation that by order of the Board's committee, this was 
his last service among them. Amid tears and remonstrance, 
they came forward and asked him to say what was the matter, 
and then what salary would keep him without any pay from the 
Board; and that they would let those few disaffected ones go 
out ; or if need be, they could start an entirely new interest. 
His reply was, that it is always right and a duty to obey the 
church authorities, even when it is believed and felt that their 
actions were a mistake and a deep wrong to the mission and 
especially to the missionary. All the efforts to discredit my 
prudence and fidelity, then and since, have failed and come to 
naught. Every one of those who made any trouble in the mis- 
sion has long since left the Reformed church, and it would 
have cost far less loss to have let only four go at the first with- 
out doing so much harm. Besides, there were some other very 
worthy people, of equal value to say the least, who became of- 
fended at the enforced full use of the absolution afterwards 
and left the Reformed church under the new administration. 
My successor himself, who was sent as a high church repre- 
sentative, soon went over as is known, to the Episcopal church, 
and in the indecent, if not dishonest, transition took along with 
him as many families as he could induce to make the transfer 
of relation. 

It is not vanity to say that my continuance in the mission 
would have been far better for it in steady growth than the 
distracted conditions and years of cost through which it was 
called to pass afterwards. On the score of sound personal 
judgment as well as economy as to this mission work the com- 
mittee blundered egregiously in their dealing with the case, by 
which years of growth were thus lost. The immediate wants 
and prospective gains were safer in the good management of 
the first pastor, then present and knowing all the conditions, 



282 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



far better than in the sad blundering control to which the in- 
fant congregation was made to suffer for years. Add to this 
another fact not generally known. There was prospect of 
buying the property of the old "Ascension church," on H 
street, within half a square of the Patent office. It had been 
abandoned by its former congregation which shortly before 
had moved into the marble edifice newly built on Massachu- 
setts avenue. The old property could not then be used for 
other than church purposes ; and they dared not sell it then for 
business uses. It was yet in tolerably fair condition. With 
some few inexpensive alterations it could have been made a 
very fit place for our mission. It was well and centrally lo- 
cated, prominent, well known, accessible from all parts of the 
city and suburbs by street cars, and could be found without a 
big hunt. Though much too large for us, it could have been 
divided off to suit our size, with room left for future growth. 
Enough rent could have been made out of parts not then need- 
ed, to have paid the interest on the whole investment. So, with- 
out making it a public matter, we had about bargained for it 
with Mr. Duncanson, chief warden of that church. The price 
was to have been merely nominal for so large and valuable a 
piece of property, as it could not be used by its owners for 
profit, but because we would use it for missionary church pur- 
poses. Nine thousand dollars were not a tenth part of its 
present value. It seemed an open opportunity thrown by Pro- 
vidence in our way for a favor. Of course when the mission- 
ary was removed, the bungling business lost to the Reformed 
church that very near possibility ; and incurred the further 
lasting mistake of locating where it has been hard to reach 
and more difficult for many to find the place of worship. 

An Overture to buy the old Ascension Church on H street 
above Ninth : 

Dear Sir: We learn that you intend to sell the old church. Our 
mission is yet weak, but it has fair prospects for growth and usefulness. 
The congregation now only bears incidental expenses. The church at 
large will help to the extent of $8,000 for a property. We inherit, as 



AT WASHINGTON. 



283 



you know, our evangelical faith and life from historical Protestantism, 
notably that part which in Switzerland, Germany, France and Holland 
refused to become strict Lutheranism, and was called by the more 
generic name Reformed. As the eldest branch of the historic Reform- 
ed family, we have of course much in common with that whole side of 
the great Reformation, in which also the Reformed Church of England 
stands. Several of our Reformed theologians, it is well known, were 
called from the continent to labor at Cambridge with your fathers of 
the Episcopal Church. So that to Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, the 
burial service and the litany of the Prayer Book are said to owe mainly 
their wondrous beauty and devotion. The same relationship holds in 
no small degree in general doctrine and cultus. The Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, our doctrinal symbol, especially in its sacramental teaching, is in 
large harmany with your XXXIX articles. The old Palatinate Liturgy 
and the Order of Worship breathe the same spirit as the Prayer Book. 
The Church Year, in its Christian festivals, is held in high honor. 

Our mission has a distinct calling in work of evangelization. We do 
not traverse the paths of others — and there is work for us here that 
other churches cannot do. 

Now we submit these and other considerations, on a bid of $8,000 
for the transfer to us of the no longer used church property as it now 
stands ; and then we can repair the old edifice for church use. But we 
will carry no debt. This will keep sacred the place of worship and save 
it from ruin or profane use. 

What of equity is in it, above the sum we can give, you may in good 
spirit donate to a worthy cause, thus assisting also to build up the 
kingdom of Christ. 

This offer was favorably received and Mr. Duncanson, 
chief warden, thought they would accept for it $9000. Just 
then the break up was ordered by the Smelling Committee, 
and a twenty-year back-set followed. 

Several good families, not of our Reformed material, who 
were anchored to the city by holding their own valuable prop- 
erty, were just about uniting with us when the change was or- 
dered. One of these had come to our house, the very week be- 
for the Sunday of my last service, and made formal application 
for membership of the whole family. They owned their own 
home and had just received an inheritance of $25,000. A 
Methodist lady of our acquaintance brought these people to us. 
R-20 



284 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Clerks in the government offices are more transient people, 
hence what are called "old citizens" anchored to the soil, are 
relatively, other things being equal, of more solid advantage in 
a Washington church. Our social and family relations gave us 
access to some good families, and from that fact alone more 
promise was before the mission than was realized in twenty 
years by the subsequent changes made by the Board. Justice 
is right sure to vindicate those suffering from inflicted wrong. 
It took many years before an accidental President was pro- 
vided to help the cause. 

The mistaken work of that smelling committee, done in 
secret among the Washington people, was an evil, pure and 
simple. Their whole effort to be mysterious and sly in their 
cunning visits, their misleading inquiries, their suspicious and 
injudicious remarks and surmises excited the church more than 
all the differences in the consistory had ever hitherto done. 
The people had to ask, what is wrong? Who has done any- 
thing improper? What awful thing has really happened? 
Then, of course, trouble began. Happening to fall in their 
wake, in several families, there were found fresh agitated feel- 
ings, which were fortunately easily allayed when they heard 
explanations given in good spirit. In the end there were only 
a few who adhered to the four real disturbers. If these last 
had been advised by the committee to attend to their own 
church duties, it is likely nothing further would have hap- 
pened to mar the peace. But the disaffected were patted on 
the back and exhorted to stand firm for the whole liturgy. All 
this weakened my hands and made it next to impossible for me 
to bring them to duty. One had resigned, another for cause 
was suspended. A public explanation to the congregation, for 
prudential reasons, could not be given, and the worst could 
be imagined. 

Before it was known why the superintendent was there, he 
came to our hall on Sunday morning, and was invited to 
preach. He refused because he "wanted to see how the ser- 
vice was conducted." He was publicly introduced as my for- 



AT WASHINGTON. 



285 



mer pastor who also helped at my ordination. Thus made 
acquainted with the members, the next morning without no- 
tice to me, he started secretly to find the people, and attacking" 
the pastor in his absence as having failed to satisfy the ex- 
treme ritualists who now were to be conciliated, to settle the 
troubles in the church. After him also came another officer of 
the Board of Missions with the same story and secret work to 
heal up disturbances reported to exist. All of which was a 
surprise to most of the members. It happened that in trying 
to call on these officials, their trail was discovered, and in dif- 
ferent families their bad work was reported to me, with won- 
der and sorrow. 

When they afterwards came to our house, an earnest confer- 
ence was held of course, trying to show how unwisely they 
had dealt with the mission and its pastor. It was their sacred 
duty to foster and not hinder the work. Then being hungry, 
they proposed to "break bread with the family." No, sir ; not 
much, till you repent of your wrong and try to heal the harm. 
If we have bread and coal in scant supply it is because the 
pastor of the German church loaned us money. With a single 
dime one day a loaf was bought, leaving three cents in the 
family pocket. Another time six cents at the market gave us 
six nubbins of corn to boil for our dinner. And yet the bal- 
ance due on salary was about $1100. No, there are no coals 
of fire heaped here on your heads. 

Telling this to a brother minister, he said, "If an enemy hun- 
gers, feed him." Yes, but was it an enemy? They did not 
claim to be such. Hence, no coals of fire for them that day. 
But if the Board pay, the bread will come. 

Under protest, the mission was given up to sheer brutality, 
with the proviso that the big debt due the pastor be now paid. 
This was no severe condition. Had not the bad management 
of the Executive Committee's officers hindered it this mission 
like my five others before, would soon have been self-support- 
ing. Now it will be for years a puny thing. There was noth- 
ing to expect from these blinded men after that. In the 



286 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Board's sessions there had been evidence of animosity between 
its officers, so sharp that they would not transact business of- 
ficially with each other, so that Elder Gross had to put the mo- 
tion to vote. Twenty years were lost by their sad mistakes. 
The first pastor's management stands clear in history. The 
Episcopals received the pastor sent as a fit high church succes- 
sor, and he took as many members with him as had been train- 
ed for the transition. 

GERMAN CHURCH PROPERTY. 

One thing more about Washington should be put upon rec- 
ord so as not to be entirely forgotten. That is, the Reformed 
church claim to some property long ago lost, strayed or stolen, 
given for the use of public worship. At the General Synod in 
Dayton, Ohio, 1866, on request of some one, it was assigned 
me to look after a Washington lot said to be valuable and of 
right belonging to the Reformed church. Reports of the old 
traditions were however dim and indefinite. Soon after that 
meeting of General Synod, some economical council of the 
Board of Missions suggested that it would cost more for me 
to go from Pittsburgh than for Dr. Zacharias, of Frederick, 
Md., to attend to the matter. To save expense the suggestion 
was accepted by me. But nothing came of it. 

Then, a few years later, came a request to me from Elder 
Samuel Wagner, an official of the U. S. Senate, and his son 
George Wagner, an excellent young man, along with Rev. J. 
W. Ebbinghaus, to take immediately action on the Washington 
church property claim. A prompt visit and examination of the 
case was made by me, and after due consultation with the 
above brethren, a lawyer by the name of Logan was put in 
charge to see what should be done. According to the best in- 
formation obtainable by Elder Wagner and his son it appear- 
ed that the well meaning owner of the land on the south side of 
G street from Twenty-first street to Twenty-second street, N 
W., had set apart and donated a whole square in the early years 
of the city for the use of the Lutherans and the German Pres- 



AT WASHINGTON. 



287 



byterians (the Reformed), for church purposes. The Luth- 
erans built a house of worship on their end, at Twenty-first 
street, and the Reformed worshiped with them, but never 
built. The trustees of the Reformed part died, and the other 
party took charge of the whole lot. During the war times 
the national government rented for its use, the end of the 
square at Twenty-second and G streets, and the Lutherans 
drew the rent and used it as their own. 

It required the action of the District Court to determine the 
ownership of that part once held by the defunct trusteeship. 
The court appointed Rev. J. W. Ebbinghaus trustee to act for 
the Reformed. A commissioner was also appointed by the 
court to take testimony and report the findings. His fees were 
$5 a day, besides cost for witnesses and attorney. If the hear- 
ing was for a half hour, or two hours or more, it counted for 
a day's charges and so became expensive to the poor claimants ; 
and without prompt pay the commissioner would hold no fur- 
ther hearings. So it dragged along. 

This was the status, when I came to Washington in charge 
of the English mission. The attorney, Logan, had removed, 
and Col. P. E. Dye was retained by Rev. Ebbinghaus. But 
for lack of funds little was done. Then an agreement was 
made between the trustees of the Germans and myself in be- 
half of the English congregation, now Grace church. In con- 
sideration of money, I think $35, furnished by me for the 
prosecution, the mission church was to share equally with the 
German claimants all the benefits recovered in the equity suit. 
At the annual meeting of the Maryland Classis held at Jeffer- 
son, a public statement of the case was made by me, and indi- 
vidual contributions in cash to the amount of $35 were made 
to me besides other promises, which subsequent jealousy never 
redeemed. But the above cash received and paid to the com- 
missioner gave us seven more days of hearing of witnesses 
who testified without pay; and a favorable report was made 
to the court. The judge confirmed the report and made a clear 
decision in favor of the Reformed trustee. From this the 



288 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Lutherans appealed; as understood, as far as my information 
goes, there it yet hangs. Our trustee is dead. 

In making his rulings, as printed by the court, the judge says 
the decision rests "mainly on the clear and intelligent testi- 
mony of the Rev. Mr. Russell/' who shows historically that 
"the German Presbyterians" was commonly used here and in 
Maryland and Virginia and elsewhere, to designate those 
German Protestants in America who were not Lutherans. So 
that whoever else owns the half square at Twenty-second and 
G streets, it cannot be claimed by the Lutherans as their in- 
heritance. 

My violent ejectment by the executive committee of the 
Board of Missions (aided by active hostility in the classis) 
from the English work in Washington, severed my connection 
here also with this church property question. They having no 
further use for me, my activities there all ceased. Afterwards 
the Maryland Classis indeed seeing what they had lost, over- 
tured me to help to regain that property. Elder G. S. Griffith 
and others wrote strong appeals asking for papers and parole 
testimony; but as long as there came no proper apology for 
improper treatment, the contract agreement and other papers 
in hand were left undisturbed in my private files. Some good 
brethren of that classis may be willing to bind up the old 
wounds. 

There is also a brief history of other church property seiz- 
ure ; that of a German congregation on Four-and-a-Half street. 
Before the war Rev. P. A. B. Meister, one of our German min- 
isters formerly of Baltimore, began an interest among the Re- 
formed Germans in Washington. He gathered money there 
and abroad among our people, and built a small church and 
pastor's house. He was at Richmond when the lines were 
drawn by the war, and hence did not come back. Rev. Mr. 
Ebbinghaus became pastor. Among his active members was 
Elder Schrote. Party feeling grew troublesome and the over- 
shadowing Lutheran party were not backward in gaining 
points of advantage. 



AT WASHINGTON. 



289 



It happened that the pastor went to Baltimore one day, and 
when he returned a policeman stood at the door forbidding 
him to enter — as other parties had taken possession and now 
held the property. Being of a peaceable and quiet nature, no 
stout personal or legal opposition was made; and by the rob- 
bery of a valuable church property belonging to the Reformed 
which was perpetrated by the high handed gobbling up of 
another denomination, makes the Four-and-a-half street church 
stand in the list of Lutheran churches of the Capital City. 
Rev. Dr. Butler has long given type to his church operations 
among the English and German elements in Washington. 

Well, Brother Ebbinghaus became pastor afterwards of the 
German congregation of the Reformed church at Sixth and 
N streets. He had an interesting and zealous people many of 
whom extended kindness and sympathy to Grace church and to 
me. They have prospered under the divine blessing. I baptized 
one of the pastor's babies in the meeting of the "Frauen 
Verein." It happened that some ten or eleven of them gave 
their names to the little girl, but though there were so many 
godmothers the names were not so many, being alike or dupli- 
cates. The father, my good friend and "Amtsbruder," has 
since died in Tennessee. 

Incidentally we mention that Senators Thurman, Davis and 
Vorhees once came near having me nominated for chaplain 
of the Senate, from which the election would surely have fol- 
lowed. It was my privilege to know the secretaries of the 
treasury, of war and of the interior. Of Presidents besides 
Hayes, we mention Buchanan before his election, when he vis- 
ited Mercersburg and would joke with the students. When he 
was in office, we called on him when in Washington. Presi- 
dent Johnson called up to him and kissed our little daughter, 
and after writing his autograph on a large photograph, he pre- 
sented it to us, as a personal mark of esteem. It was neatly put 
up in a White House envelope. President and Mrs. Hayes al- 
ways received us very graciously, and as often as we took visit- 
ing friends to call on him, he showed us special favor. We, my- 



2O0 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



self, wife and daughter, took a supper once at President Mc- 
Kinley's. By special favor of Secretary Sherman, we handled 
in the treasury a package containing $2,500,000, and he gave 
orders to show us the whole U. S. treasury. Lincoln's favorite 
usher, Pendel, long at the presidential mansion, never forgets 
us among his early friends. It was worth our while also, liv- 
ing at Washington to get the benefit of visits to the public 
buildings as educational sights, studies and associations. You 
never need to have a dull day as long as you are able to enter 
the grounds and the magnificent structures full of art, of 
classis emblems and of historical representations in bronze, or 
marble, paintings, stucco and fresco work. All the cost of 
these, counted by many millions, is for the people, and we take 
our share freely. 

Once several strange ladies from the South asked to go along 
with us when appointed by the Reformed Alliance to preach in 
the Soldiers' Home. On inquiring who pays for all these public 
structures, they were told that it was at the expense of the 
people who support the government. "Oh, that's it," said one, 
"then I see where all my taxes go." The expenditures so large 
and so lavish to the contractors by vote of the politicians who 
administer affairs, are often indeed quite as much for the 
parties as for the service. But it is making Washington one 
of the finest and most beautiful cities in the world. It is a 
lifetime event for every American who can do so, to go at 
least once to the nation's capital, see its glory and learn 
some of its manifold lessons. 

We left Washington with much regret and personal sorrow 
for what we had suffered and yet failed to reach the good. 
Many friends there held us close to their warm hearts. Even 
now after all these years of absence, whenever we go back, 
doors are hospitably open to us, kindly hand-grasps touch the 
magnetic cords within, and we all the more wish that no ca- 
lamity had ever there overtaken us in our ministerial career. 
The local church too has undoubtedly suffered and lost. You 
cannot say but that it has been a shadow too on my after pro- 



AT WASHINGTON. 



291 



fessional life. Retired from the active pastorate by the formal 
authorities of the Reformed church, for many years it made me 
shrink perhaps undully, and caused me to withdraw too far 
away from what was once active duty. For some years it 
seemed in our seclusion as though we were cut off from the 
current and flow of events in which we once lived. Yet we have 
not been idle nor unmindful of ordination vows, even in this 
quietude. Living in the country, to which we seemed forced to 
remove for a livelihood, after six months waiting for a call, 
there were experiences to meet with, that may be for spiritual 
good. All this surely has been sent for wise purposes by our 
heavenly Father. 

Removal is generally a losing business. The treatment re- 
ceived from the officials of the Board cost me heavily. We 
had broken up for a second time our home at Pittsburgh to 
obey the voice of the church. The property that we had 
gained, not from high salary, or otherwise in any part for 
ministerial services, we had to sell when we went to Philadel- 
phia, and again the same thing had to be done with what we 
had when we went to Washington, only this time the losses 
were greater. When they were in bad humor with us and did 
not pay the missionary stipend until it had run to over a 
thousand dollars, they intimated that we had property, and 
therefore it was not a hardship to break up our surroundings 
and throw us on our own resources at personal loss and sacri- 
fice. But we could not well eat our hard earned real estate, 
even to screen the Board's mistakes in solemn duty. The 
Pittsburgh property of course had to be sold, and this was 
done at no small disadvantage, as much below cost as all our 
salary while engaged at Washington had amounted to. Three 
removes, they say, is as bad as a fire. But now here in the 
quiet country we had at least time to readjust our disturbed 
finances. Thrown on daily cost for living and monthly rent 
for six months after our salary had been cut off in Washing- 
ton, without other income at the time, rigid economy had for 
us its call and work. My family cheerfully bore all the pres- 



292 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



sure, which to them was great, for the Lord's sake. It was a 
process and season of humiliation and suffering, but He has 
paid us back more than double. 

My ministerial labors were for a while afterwards only 
casual and limited. Then after the death of its pastor, the 
Greencastle church was supplied from our home, when they 
had no candidate preaching for them. This lasted with more 
or less regularity from the fall of 1880 till the next June. 
There were those who strongly overtured me to consent to be 
a candidate for the vacant pastorate. But it would be neces- 
sary to sing mum on the temperance question as one elder 
said. On this reform we were not fanatical, but it is quite 
another thing to be gagged even for that much. About wor- 
ship and other living questions there were also hampering con- 
siderations. Among the rest was one rather hard condition ; 
that this next minister, if dying, where two lately had already 
gone to the grave, must be able to "bury himself." Having 
been the victim recently of such cold-hearted leaders, the burnt 
child shuns the fire, so it was thought best not to put one's self 
again into the hands of narrow minded and factious men. 
Knowing however as we do now, but did not then, it would 
have been a pleasant charge — wherein I have often preached, 
at least it has become such, after certain fires had made it a 
burnt district. My friends there have become very warm per- 
sonally, and their number seems to be on the decided increase. 
This may however be because in a great battle they were helped 
to save their fine parsonage ; and possibly too, that the loss of 
some prominent material in membership was in the same way 
prevented. 



XXI. 



At Palatinate College 

f~\ NE day in the late summer of 1881 a telegram was 
brought in with an illegible signature, asking me to be 
at home on a near day designated. On the set day came Rev. 
Henry Mosser, of Reading, bearing as secretary of the Board 
of Trustees of Palatinate College, a commission announcing 
my election to the presidency of that institution at Myerstown, 
Pa. He was one of my former students at Lancaster and 
urgently pressed the acceptance upon me. The odor of the 
notorious "Myerstown Convention" which was held during the 
liturgical controversy had hardly died out and left yet an un- 
favorable impression as against the very name of the place on 
general principles. When living in Philadelphia, ten or more 
years before, I had been chosen to deliver the annual literary 
address before Palatinate College ; but in the discharge of that 
duty, so little time was allowed me from the Publication office 
that no general acquaintance could be made with the college 
or the town. 

But now the office of President was for some time vacant; 
the new fall session had already begun, and the Board in its 
wisdom and prudence desired to have an executive head to 
the faculty. Their secretary urged in their favor that "they 
were most excellent men" who pledged themselves all to the 
heartiest co-operation in restoring good management and pros- 
perity to the run-down institution ; leaving large liberty of ac- 
tion to the college executive. It was made to appear as a plain 
case of duty for a man with nothing else to do — and the call 
was accepted — reserving only a month or more to close my af- 
fairs on the farm. My former students, among them the secre- 
tary of the Board, himself and other who knew me well were 
pleased, and they testified of my former success in teaching 



294 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



when they had been pupils in my classes at Lancaster years ago. 
But here again came a harrassing removal of myself and fam- 
ily with our household good, and consequent unavoidable loss 
and damage. However in good faith and with pious trust, we 
were willing to take up the tangled threads of the suffering 
and sadly disordered college affairs, and make a strong com- 
bined effort with its friends to bring order out of confusion, 
and secure prosperity with new patronage and restored con- 
fidence among its disheartened trustees ; while it was also hop- 
ed that the damaged credit and retrograding finances might 
be repaired and relieved. It needed but a few days of actual 
contact however with affairs at the institution after our ar- 
rival there till the real situation was found to be amazingly 
worse than had been represented — either by design or from 
possible misapprehension. A few statements will show what 
sort of picture to my view the condition made. 

Confusion reigned in the whole spirit and make-up of the 
institution, on the evening when we reached the college. The 
students were then in wildest spirit of disorder. The music 
teacher, in a customary tantrum, had for days refused to do 
any duty, because a brother of one professor with other stu- 
dents did, not however in study hours, blow their horns near 
her door to worry her. She therefore continued to seclude 
herself in her room. Various other members of the faculty 
were at odds and evens and outs with each other. The board- 
ing department was wretchedly disorganized. The good stew- 
ard was the first solid and orderly substance met with. From 
September till the latter part of November the classes and 
recitations generally had been running at loose ends pretty 
much according to the sweet will of each one's whim. It soon 
became a settled conviction that if the actual state of things 
had been known to me, the office of president would have re- 
mained vacant till filled by some other incumbent; even if he 
were moved by the best intentions and most sacred sense of 
religious duty — unless willing and ready for a sort of mar- 
tyrdom. 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE.- 



295 



Gathering up the reins with as strong and determined a hand 
as possible in making the new departure, was an immediate 
necessity. But when once in working condition, everything 
began to move in tolerable order. Hours of study were fixed ; 
regular recitations were set ; recreations allowed ; chapel pray- 
ers held morning and evening at which all were required to be 
in attendance ; and regular hours for meals — these regulations 
soon made the place wear an appearance of college routine 
life. Some disorderly students kicked; one was expelled, and 
two were suspended. They were no longer the running power 
of the institution. New additions more than made up for the 
losses many times. Heads up, eyes right, acts orderly; the 
body became quite respectable and to a certain extent self-reg- 
ulating. The standing "Committee on Discipline" from the 
Board found its occupation gone, and they even began to com- 
plain that they were not called on to come and settle college 
troubles, and "eat so many big dinners" at the institution, 
where they usually had to hold their meetings. The rooms 
for boarders were about filled up by new students, and there 
was a happy ending for all, at the close of the first term at 
the Christmas recess. This marked also the inauguration of 
the new executive which was to them an event. His address on 
that occasion afterwards published, outlined his plan; and it 
was heartily approved by the assembled Board of Trustees. 

Financial and other reforms as well were needed. All was 
left mainly in the president's hands, not because he desired it. 
He was the treasurer, though he offered to serve at $100 less 
salary if that trust were put into other hands. The professors 
to their surprise were promptly paid every quarter. Old bills 
previously left long outstanding were settled. Supplies were 
bought at wholesale rates. A better looking table was spread 
for professors and students who sat at the same board. The 
old patched and much stained table covers gave place to new 
ones not so disgusting in appearance. Iron spoons and steel 
forks were replaced with silver plated table ware, bought at 
my own personal expense for the educational effect on the stu- 



296 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



dents. The meals became human like and enjoyable. The cost 
for general improvements was more economical than the for- 
mer outlay. Only the music teacher still grumbled at the 
"coarse food" when her private orders for dainties no longer 
made her a special exception. The students were forbidden 
to congregate in the kitchen, and the boys and girls advised 
not to huddle up in that department. A separate stairway 
down to the dining room was made for the girls, so as not to 
crowd through the kitchen and laundry; and division doors in 
the corridors were erected between the male and female ends 
of the college. Against some of these regulations there was of 
course some kicking by both the boys and girls. 

Study hour regulations were the hardest to enforce. Free 
range through all parts of the building at all hours of the day 
and night as formerly was prohibited; and the loose habit of 
running the town streets at will, in any hours was broken up. 
A set of boys, sons of good families had been in the habit of 
locking themselves in an unused room during study hours to 
engage in card playing. If a call were made at the door they 
shuffled away the evidences of the game before unlocking, 
and then in seeming innocence, if ordered to their own rooms, 
there could be only a reprimand. The steward one day notified 
the president of what was then going on; and when that offi- 
cial knocked at the door there was the usual hustle to hide the 
cards. But too late; for his shoulder went through the thin 
panel of the locked door and the whole party sat there exposed 
with cards yet in hand. Disorderly ones thereafter began to 
complain of being "watched." 

Recitations were not a farce. Students were ranged in 
classes. All, big or little, could not go ranging abroad for fun 
with the botany class, or belong first to one class, then to an- 
other, attending anywhere according to choice. Some refer- 
ence to a general course of study had to be observed and the 
students were therefore classified. Friends and patrons no- 
ticed the enforced regulations, and the Board of Trustees ex- 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



297 



pressed themselves as especially pleased; notably when it was 
learned also that the big indebtedness was decreasing. 

The interest on the Franklin and Marshall mortgage loan 
of $10,000 was promptly paid semi-annually. Stockholders 
of the general college subscriptions bonds who had received 
no interest for a long while past, now realized some income. 
And the principal of the whole debt was reduced $1577 during 
the short time of this administration, besides having met cur- 
rent expenses and the above interests together with the extra 
improvements. We ended the first year with a flourish; and 
started the second year with a flush — even having a larger in- 
crease of students, boarders and others. 

But before the term was half over, a serious disaster befell 
the administration, and the college again run down very low ; 
not from high standard and character, but in financial matters. 
This came from the lack of moral backbone and wisdom on the 
part of the Board of Trustees ; who were suddenly stampeded 
by the students when they rebelled in a combine against the 
proper rule requiring entire subjection to law. It is surprising 
that successful business men, such as most of the Board were, 
could have committed themselves to a movement so utterly dis- 
astrous to their college trust. Now, as then, they may be 
charged most deliberately, after all these years, with blind 
folly or gross unfitness to manage an educational institution; 
which had suffered for years very seriously in the history gone 
before this last great blunder ; and by which finally the college 
was a few years later under other executives lost to the Re- 
formed church from the same inaptitude. 

A few cases of firmly administered discipline, sustained and 
supported by the Board would have been good advertisement 
enough to have established the reputation and claims of the 
college as a safe place for boys and girls, from the confidence 
of the public. Much ground had already been made lately in 
favor of morals and study in Palatinate, from what had been 
done during so short a trial. The acts of discipline inflicted on 
several students however had aroused family pride, as was to 



298 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



have been expected indeed, in several quarters. These, unit- 
ing, also in another trivial case, served to combine a number 
of the proverbially clannish families and even most of the local 
members of the Board against the official course of the presi- 
dent; whom they had so solemnly engaged to support, and 
whose acts they had thus far so heartily approved as for the 
good of the college. An ill-advised chairman of a committee, 
who had found his officious occupation going into disuse, join- 
ed with some students then under censure, in a formal com- 
plaint to the Board against the exercise of the college disci- 
pline ; which he thought would result in the loss of patronage. 
Immediate small loss, without looking at the future perma- 
nent gain, might affect the interest income for college bonds. 
He with the chain linked connecting families asked therefore 
for a special meeting of the whole Board to consider a case of 
discipline. Without consulting the president the notices for 
such meeting were sent out. When the meeting was held, the 
president, thus improperly treated, protested against the un- 
derhand dealings. He stood on his official and solemn duty to 
the institution of the church, and this angered them. They 
had little conception of college management, as was evident 
from former examples of disastrous failures in the past years. 

Misapprehending in toto the gravity of the case, and threat- 
ened danger to the reputation and well being of the college, 
they unwisely sided with the few disaffected ones to break 
down authority and government. When the real state of the 
case was shown however and a straight out reiteration of what 
was settled in the authority given in written law framed by 
themselves and by their approval of my inaugural address, 
their common sense brought a majority vote to sustain me — 
though in feeling and sympathy, it was plain to see some of 
them still encouraged and stood in with the rebellious stu- 
dents working to make all the trouble they could. Thus en- 
couraged the insubordination spread through the institution, 
resulting in the suspension of a number. The jealousy thus 
created and fostered was to make it too hot for the head of 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



299 



the faculty. It accomplished in the end its purpose. For finding 
that the very men, who should have sustained wise and good 
government for the future benefit and prosperity of the insti- 
tution, were not equal to the emergency; they were left with 
the untamed rampant spirits on their hands. And the subse- 
quent entire failure of their system to build up the college, 
which had commenced to gain relief ended after a few subse- 
quent years of varied struggles under three other succeeding 
presidents, in absolute and ruinous failure of their whole 
scheme. 

Having demanded entrance to their sessions and a full hear- 
ing at that secretly held special meeting of the Board, an ex- 
planation was given involving also a defence which was in sub- 
stance as follows : "College character is a tender thing to be 
handled. If you meddle with it roughly you crush it, and it 
certainly dies. The mere fact of the calling of this meeting in 
the face of enforced discipline and self-protection is a disaster 
and a wrong in each way. Well known to all of you was my 
idea of college law and method of administration. My condi- 
tion of acceptance of the presidency, and especially as clearly 
expressed in the inaugural address set this out plainly. The 
Board, faculty and patrons approved it, and so stood pledged 
to support me ; and the first year already demonstrated its suc- 
cess. My course, plan and acts since, have not been of a dif- 
ferent sort. But you come now secretly to undermine the 
work, upset what has been already done and are now trying its 
executive without due notice of your intention — undoing thus 
what your standing law put into the president's hands, and 
which has been working thus far so well. Some of you by bad 
individual private counsel misled the disorderly students, and 
now they are leading you in your attempt to drive me. 

"Your honest and hearty support was pledged officially be- 
fore this relation between you and the president was formed. 
At the beginning of this unsought for work, open signs of the 
worst conditions of disorder were the first things to be seen 
on my arrival. Trunks were then packed of all but one girl 
R-21 



3oo 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and three boys ready to leave the college. The music depart- 
ment was entirely suspended by the teacher in rankest rebel- 
lion. No order was observed anywhere. Students and studies 
were not classified, but all went at will. Like wild animals the 
inmates went through the halls, and to and from table. Study 
hours were scarcely known. Great holes were willfully torn in 
the floors, and big patches of plastering were kicked off the 
walls. Chairs were broken, tables smashed, doors unhinged, 
windows shattered, and bedding ruined. Divine worship morn- 
ing and evening was a mockery ; some sang songs along with 
our hymns ; others talked or whispered together — or laughed 
and lounged, and mocked. At barbarous pleasure they were in 
the kitchen, or laundry, and tusseled with the waiting girls. 
Some uncouthly snuffled over the cooking pots on the range 
and examined dishes of victuals, and before these were brought 
to the table claimed that the best must be put near to their 
places ; others snatched the baking cakes from the griddle, or 
went to demand refreshment whenever it pleased them, or 
threw meat from end to end of the tables. 

An intelligent Christian lady said to your secretary one day 
in the presence of my family : "How could you persuade these 
people to leave their comfortable home and come here?" It 
was indeed far worse than had been told. General good con- 
duct and fair behavior was first of all required, with due order 
in the halls and rooms, respecting the beds subject to the soil- 
ing by dirty boots, as well as the carpets, furniture, etc. No 
stolen interviews were henceforth permitted to be held between 
the sexes ; either in the dark halls, or on the campus, or in the 
steward's private rooms ; and no uncilivized disorder was per- 
mitted at the tables. Study hours meant at least that the stu- 
dents be in their rooms, and no lamps were to be left burning 
late alone. The girls could only go down town under some 
one's care. Beyond these reasonable restrictions, all were free. 
Good students were not the ones who found fault ; and parents 
and generally patrons approved. The steward said: "It is 
heaven now to what it was." 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



30I 



My success and experience elsewhere should also have been 
taken as something favorable. In the high school in Mary- 
land, as also in the two years tutorship in Marshall College, 
and a term as sub-rector at Lancaster, there was never any 
trouble, such as occurred here with all sorts of spoiled stu- 
dents. Good judgment is now called into question and you 
rate large success at a discount. The main trouble started in 
bad manners. For instance, a girl one day publicly at the table 
reached past several guests, thrust, her fork into a piece of 
meat and hauled it past their plates to her own. Such and 
other things almost too gross to mention were common in for- 
mer days. Such manners might be thought susceptible of a 
good degree of improvement in our administration. The les- 
sons given might have been for good, had it been appreciated 
and seconded by the Board, and not neutralized, or nullified by 
giving countenance and strength to the disciplined students. 
Whatever evil may follow will be caused by trustees of this 
school. One of the young men, for instance, told his father 
that three members of the Board and one professor advised 
against submission to the president's authority, because the 
disaffected students would surely be restored, if only they 
would remain in the town. Good government was the only 
remedy. 

"Their complaint itself was untrustworthy. A majority of 
the signers were hazed into giving their names. Some were 
told that though they stood well now with the president and 
had not yet been even "scolded" by him, still their time would 
come. One signed because the table board was not good. An- 
other because the boys and girls were not allowed to mingle 
in free interviews anywhere and walk together on the streets. 
Some wished to be on the winning side when the President 
goes. One girl (and her mother) said, "All the girls talked 
awfully about the college." This was after she had been ad- 
vised to withdraw as a student because of her general bad in- 
fluence. When these girls were called in assembly before wit- 



302 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



nesses, they all replied that there was no cause for such talk. 
Either they then spoke truly — or they lied. 

It is known that some were absolutely true and faithful to 
duty. Fifteen of the "disorderly" ones then submitted to law 
and authority. They signed this statement severally and 
freely : "The subscribers, by signing this paper hereby severally 
agree to submit to the rules and regulations of the college and 
the authority of the President unconditionally." Another pa- 
per signed by five "expresses sincere sorrow and regret for 
having refused for a time," by encouragements "from persons 
in whom they had confidence," to give due submission to the 
college authority. And yet, on the same date, they were sign- 
ing this complaint to the Board. Thus students under disci- 
pline showed their lack of honor, their duplicity, and never- 
theless also their power to dictate terms to the Board. 

Best discipline is kind, prompt, single and decided. Make it 
forever impossible to override the law. Executive power must 
be clothed with force enough so that it cannot be estopped or 
overthrown in the process of proper correction. Former years 
in that institution showed only half way measures generally, 
and temporizing with disobedience to law. The years there- 
after of similar inefficiency to meet such a crisis as this brought 
only the full fruit in college suicide. A divided faculty, a weak 
directory, and a "no action" policy, had almost talked it to 
death just before my time. 

"If my governmental administration was not for good, then 
let an effort be made in plain confidence to indicate wherein it 
was wrong. Where it is right sustain the course and, vindi- 
cate healthy judgment. The loss of a few students even to a 
dozen if need be, will be a permanent gain in the early hereaf- 
ter. Restored confidence and fullest harmony become neces- 
sary now to save the college from running on for years at a 
financial and student loss in the future, as was the case in the 
past. Do any of you want to go back to that? If misrule is 
"boss" here, then better .shut up at once. Or disband the Board 
and subject the faculty to the students themselves with full 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



303 



right to manage. But there are worse things than the loss of 
these disorderly students. Popular feeling in the town in its 
blind folly, hurts its own interests even financially, by helping 
to injure the college. Let no friends join in similar or worse 
harm. In the midst of a battle it is not good policy to recall a 
commander for a court martial, especially at the instigation of 
the enemy. Do not change the administration in order to put 
wrong-doers at the head of affairs. Rather start anew with 
the confidence of parents and patrons. Shall the students be 
the head and ruling power, rather than an executive officer 
and the Board? 

"Any charge made against the head even by implication, 
covering an offensive act, should be in a timely form named, 
specifying the same, with names of witnesses, and time given 
for self-defence. This is the right of all Americans. What is 
kept from sight in covered byways that are dark, cannot be 
defended. Men and brethren, do not thrust out your official 
in the dark without due process. Save your own honor and 
that of the college, and thus you will fully vindicate the right. 
Strike out the item from the call for this meeting on the face 
of the petition from the conspiring rebels, who have been mis- 
erably misled by mistaken members of your own body. If you 
want this college saved, then let all join me to save it." 

Here followed the action of the Board on the petition of the 
disaffected students, among whom were those who had been 
disciplined. While the face of this paper shows that the Pres- 
ident and the college authority were sustained, yet there was 
an undercurrent of feeling the other way; and the students 
somehow were made to understand "that he daren't do it 
again." 

ACTION OF THE BOARD. 

Whereas. The difficulties at this college seem to have been the out- 
growth of misunderstanding and complications which it would be idle 
to attempt to explain, therefore, 

Resolved, That the Board declines to entertain the petition of the 
students touching the action of the President, and that the authority of 
the President in the government of the college be sustained. 



304 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Resolved, That as much of the refusal of the students to submit to 
the authority of the President seems to have been brought about by 
misunderstanding of motives, and by "encouragement received from 
persons in whom they had confidence," the students who have refused 
obedience be given permission to return to college on condition that 
they severally agree to submit to the rules and regulations of the col- 
lege and the authority of the President. 

Resolved, That the extreme punishment of expulsion shall not be 
exercised until after a full trial before the whole faculty and sentence 
be approved by the committee on discipline. (By the rules adopted 
previously by the Board the whole executive power was in the hands of 
the President.) 

The above is a true, correct official copy of the action of the Board 
of Trustees of Palatinate College, adopted December 5th, 1882. 

J. E. Hiester, 
Secretary Pro. Tern. 

Victory for law was won. But the number of students di- 
minished, and that scared the Board. The break could not now 
be averted. Eclipse came soon. Permission had been given 
for the offenders "to return on condition that they severally 
agree to submit to the rules and regulations of the college and 
the authority of the President." 

Law, the president stated, has a twofold object and end: for 
the general good and for the individual well being. Trans- 
gression subverts both these. Every violation of law destroys 
the harmony of the whole body, and wrongs the common life. 
Punishment is meant for wholesome restraint and for correc- 
tion and improvement of offenders. Acts of discipline should 
therefore reach through the subject to the common safety. 
Lawbreakers owe something to the majesty of the law. If 
this be paid there is a concession to law and an acknowledg- 
ment to the necessity of obedience. All who refuse to submit 
to known conditions are lawbreakers — rebels against good 
government. Such as put themselves beyond the reach of 
proper penalties are outlaws. 

These parties voluntarily submit therefore now to the order 
of this institution ; in so far as they have violated the law, they 
accept hereby its penalty. 1. They are present at this public 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



305 



bar of the institution to suffer this rebuke for their willfulness. 

2. They now receive the solemn reprimand of the college. 

3. They confess their transgression by this public act of humil- 
iation. 4. They pledge new obedience to all proper regulation, 
and promise faithful attention to college duties. We welcome 
them therefore with full sympathy and confidence to their for- 
mer places and duties. 

Then followed my resignation. The Board had no legal 
right to take its secret action in the premises. My acceptance 
of the call to service is by the year and cannot be terminated at 
will. The three weeks' notice to quit my domicile here is not 
at this season of the year a reasonable time in which to make 
the change. It would require longer notice to remove legally 
a monthly tenant. 

The Board knew of my intention to resign at the next meet- 
ing falling only a few weeks after this time. A committee of 
the Board was lately informed to that effect ; and my resigna- 
tion was already written. But for the good of the institution 
it was not thought proper to break in on the college year to 
make it public. 

The meeting at Reading was an outrage on courtesy and 
right, without notice to me, or leave to make any statement for 
their benefit, or mine, left no room for a word of self-defence 
or stay. Such snap judgment could send any one adrift with 
a character that might stand in the way of future work in the 
church, faithfully served for thirty years with the best offer- 
ings of his life. In all charity the action there taken should 
have been avoided. 

You violate your own contract and take away my equitable 
rights. Obeying your call in good faith, I came here, suffered 
pecuniary loss. The salary and other valuable considerations 
are promised "per annum," that is to run by the college year. 
Your action breaks up all this, and is therefore plainly illegal, 
while it inflicts more loss on me now at this going than was in- 
curred in the perhaps too thoughtless and now regretful com- 
ing. All the gabble of persons who owe the college protection 



3o6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and defence is not based, it is pleasant to know, on any charge 
of misconduct, immorality, or want of faithfulness to duty. 

It is said, the standard of college discipline based on Chris- 
tian morals, and executive fidelity to the office as head of the 
faculty, was too high. If held on that charge and condemned 
in your opinion by your Board, no one should be unwilling 
indeed to leave an institution of learning where such elements 
are not desired. 

As a matter of historical fact, the withdrawal and removal 
from the college building occurred three months before the end 
of my second college year. The president pro tempore did 
however before the removal try to cut off the heat from the 
rooms, as far as he was able to control the steward, and sent 
notice that my family must now "p a y board" to him. 

A few years later Dr. W. C. Schaeffer became its head for 
a time. But even he, with all the general rally, could not keep 
that college successfully running with the incompetent manage- 
ment of its Board of Trustees unless he should buy it. As a 
feeder to Franklin and Marshall it has ceased to live. 

Some of those who were students at the Palatinate College 
during my administration have turned out well. Vt is a pleas- 
ure to see a number of them in the ministry and other profes- 
sions. But so far as observation goes they were not of those 
among the rebellious disorderlies who created the trouble. In 
all the other places of teaching trusts, my students general- 
ly were one with me in sympathy and dutiful obedience. It is 
my conviction now, that if there had been no improper 
interference and bad counsels given those at Palatinate, they 
would have learned to stand by the president to the last man. 

Of the four college presidencies offered to my hand, this 
only full acceptance was perhaps the very worst of all. It is 
possible that this one also should have been declined with 
thanks. Still, no one knows what reflex influences may go out 
from the work that was done during those few years in Palat- 
inate. In view of their debt and poverty, I remitted from the 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



307 



start fifty dollars a year on salary for the president and acting 
treasurer. 

All through my life, it has been a puzzle to me to determine 
just what are divine calls. Sometimes, it now seems to me, I 
have run when not called. And at other times perhaps there 
may have been real calls which were not heeded. As matters 
have in the events turned out, there were times when it seemed 
as if called to a work; but later, the evidence was rather 
against the conclusion to which at the deciding time the mind 
and heart brought the will. Then again, looking back with the 
light of after years' experience, it does seem that there may 
have been something unnoticed, when an apparent call was 
examined and in all the known circumstances it was judged 
best to decline. Such facts seem to be determined by some- 
thing like the case where the prophet bade the king smite on 
the ground. He struck but thrice, and then stayed; whereas 
as he afterwards learned, it had been better for him to have 
given seven or more strokes. Or, where Moses struck the 
rock for water more than once, and so, sinned. Or, where 
Peter was moved to speak on the mount of transfiguration, 
and did not know what he was talking about. We have no 
pope to decide such things absolutely for us. 

ROBBED THE BANK. 

When we were about leaving Myerstown, the outgoing con- 
ditions were very different from what they were at the time of 
our arrival. No Pax V obis cum was pronounced upon us when 
we packed up to quit the college. Two years before, we were 
welcomed, feasted and feted by some of the splendid families 
of the town. Many of the kind hearted people made it pleasant 
in the social circle ; and by special invitations to their hospit- 
able homes with most excellent cheer, rich suppers and con- 
genial intercourse they won our esteem. But now in our exit 
from their town, though we had not personally offended a 
single one of the people, they seemed with one consent to shun 
us on the street ; and finally left us to take our departure with- 



3o8 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



out making a sign or giving formally a single good-bye. They 
had put us under the ban. The town in such cases hangs to- 
gether in unbroken chain. 

Having made ready our effects and settled with the finance 
committee of the college Board showing a good balance due us 
for advances made from my purse, the books were passed to a 
new treasurer. It was found that there was paid out of my 
pocket for the use of the college treasury more than $300 in 
settling bills and paying dues to the professors, besides a note 
also of $600 due me for money personally advanced to pay a 
claim they had incurred before my advent. This last was in a 
Reading bank and had come down through years of a previous 
administration. This money was now needed for my use. 
Without it there was barely enough cash in my pocket for car- 
fare; and more would be otherwise required very soon after 
my departure. In vain my earnest personal appeals were made 
to the new treasurer and also to several members of the 
finance committee present at settlement to relieve the situation 
by advancing some part of what was thus due me. This had 
often been done by me here in favor of others and for the col- 
lege treasury. But they were simply obdurate in refusal to 
follow better examples. Well then, I went to the bank to close 
up the deposit book account of my treasurership. Books were 
balanced by the cashier and mine receipted in full was handed 
over to me, apparently in correct form. Then the unused 
stamps of the check book were passed to the new treasur- 
er, Judge Coover. On that was found $1.50 to be refunded and 
he gave me a check on the bank for "$1.50 dollars." But he 
refused to give even .a due bill to show the large balance due 
me as late treasurer of the college; because, as he entered it, 
there was "no corum" of the committee present, although the 
two of the members of the finance committee present certified 
in my favor ,on a memorandum, simply stating that the 
account was "correct and the settlement satisfactory," with 
such a balance due to the former treasurer. With no smooth 
feelings, in my haste of starting for the cars, I sent a boy to 



AT PALATINATE COLLEGE. 



309 



the bank for my $1.50 on Judge Coover's check. He came 
back with a handful of gold, which when counted showed 
$149.75. Then he was told: "John, there is some mistake here. 
Run quickly, so that you get here in time before the bus leaves 
for the train. Tell them at the bank there is some mistake 
about this money." Almost out of breath he returned again 
with the gold saying that they told him at the bank "it is not a 
mistake, but all right/' for since they had balanced my check 
book they had discovered there were twenty-five cents yet due 
the bank for some item for which they had retained that 
twenty-five cents from the check. 

There was no time for further parley; entering the waiting 
buss away we went, thinking on the way that the members of 
the finance committee most likely had sent me this, and the 
amount was duly credited on the memorandum held as balance 
due. It made me feel good — with thanks to them. 

Money in the pocket left less gloom for the railroad ride. 
It had been without this cash otherwise a close drain. The sur- 
plus was soon paid out. A notice in a few days came from the 
bank, that $148.50 was due from me. The deposit book said, 
No; and the cashier's signature said it was all right. But if 
they meant that the money John Mertz had brought was not 
mine, after the notice that there was a mistake which they de- 
nied indignantly as not possible — because the bank makes no 
mistakes — it was plainly their own fault. It was their mistake 
on the face of Judge Coover's check. Having used the money 
it could not just then on call be replaced as they saucily de- 
manded. An order on the finance committee however for 
the amount was given against the balance that they 
owed me. Thus the bank was saved by me from its own error. 

But the tangled facts in the case got mixed up with garbled 
stories reported to the public and circulated at Reading and 
elsewhere, to the effect that Dr. Russell had robbed the Myers- 
town bank. They received their money back in full credit on 
the college due bill. If the bank was robbed of anything in 
this transaction, it was only of its conceit of infallibility — not 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



of its gold. Their mistake was no crime of mine to be charged 
against me. They did not pay accurately the $1.50 check, nor 
had they exactly balanced the check book by 25 cents, as set- 
tled with me. They seemed to have some rule of addition, sub- 
traction and remainder, but no golden silence and regard for 
honor. 

Nearly all the men on the college Board in those days are 
dead. Those who tried to cover their errors have gone to 
their final account. In most gracious charity, it must be said, 
moral wrong was done me — which is now forgiven. They 
probably acted up to the measure of their light and ability. 
Prejudice and jealousy had more to do with warping judg- 
ment than what some may charge to real badness. Among 
them also it is a joy to know were some sterling Christian men 
and brethren, who remained (truly my warm personal friends 
to the end. The good Lord accept their offerings, and mine ! 

Palatinate College was never afterward able to assert itself, 
nor recover any positive character which it had lost before 
my time. As foretold in my argument before the Board for 
the better moral support, it became a mere uncertain quantity. 
It went down still further in the hands of several later suc- 
cessors, until in the end it 'was a confessed failure, and had to 
be sold. It died of unnecessary debt, of unskilled nursing of 
mistaken management and of misunderstood cries. A writ- 
ten formal offer to buy it in personal interest, was evidence of 
love for it, by him who is now thankful for relief from such a 
burden. It had some ardent friends who deserve well for their 
services. Requiscat in pace! 



XXII. 



For Mont Alto 

RETURNING from the Palatinate College to Waynes- 
boro, we found no resting place for the soles of our 
feet. In order to secure a temporary home, a place was bought 
two and a half miles west of the town along the turnpike. It 
adjoins my mother's birthplace. From here an oversight could 
be had of the ancestral homestead, bought in 1875, and where 
we had lived before being enveigled to Myerstown. In this new 
home everything was in bad repair, and it took some time to 
put it in neat condition. But though only chosen for an in- 
tended temporary stay, till other church work should offer, it 
proved a pleasant retreat for us during these later days of tur- 
moil. A tenant farmer does the work required in the agri- 
cultural pursuit. 

It was expected from the first, that having the property paid 
for, we would have at least a comfortable moderate and cheap 
living here, without much direct trouble or grinding expense, 
till we could take some charge again in the ministry ; or as sev- 
eral times before, do gratuitous service for the church. The 
repairs engaged much spare time and prevented the days from 
hanging heavily on our hands. It was a great change of life 
both for me and my family. 

Before long there came a committee from the Mont Alto 
charge, ten miles away across country roads, requesting me to 
become their indefinite stated supply. They could not, it was 
said, pay much for a regular pastor or supply as the member- 
ship numbered only about thirty or less ; and some of these 
being furnace people on laborer's wages, had not much to 
spare. Col. Wiestling, an elder of the congregation, told me 
however, that for liquor and tobacco the largest part of the 
pay roll was regularly spent, for other than religious privi- 
leges. Of course all the families did not belong to the Re- 



312 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

formed church. So that for more than the eight years of my 
continued supply service there, the salary received ranged at a 
mere nominal sum of what they could pay ; never more than 
$200 a year — and some of them thought that rather a fat thing 
for the preacher. Rain or shine, hot or cold, good drives or 
bad roads at times mud nearly to the hubs, or frozen into rough 
bumpers ; there was absolutely no omission of service. Bolts 
had to be carried in assorted quantities for contingent repairs 
of carriage, and sometimes it required extensive general over- 
hauling. The attendance, which Elder Wiestling reported 
from actual count, had been at an average of from 20 to 23 
at regular service for the previous three years, gradually in- 
creased now to about one hundred and twenty-five or up- 
wards, on all ordinary occasions. The membership also began 
to grow meanwhile, till there was a net gain, above all tran- 
sient heavy losses, of one hundred and nine. Some of these 
were very substantial and as is thought also godly people. 

The principal elder was a great stay to the preacher. Col. 
Wiestling was a many-sided man. A faithful friend, a genial 
companion, a domestic man at home, a good singer, a finely 
skilled organist, a valuable elder, a safe adviser, a first-class 
Sunday-school superintendent, a general manager of men, 
who had been in the war times a regimental and brigade com- 
mander, and had worked a thousand men in a tunnel and on a 
railroad construction ; he had great personal magnetism in or- 
ganizing and running a political convention, or making an off- 
hand speech ; and he was entirely at home on any part of the 
twenty-three thousand acres of mountain land held by the 
furnace company ; or in the most select family or social circle 
of polite society. He made the Mont Alto furnace in its reor- 
ganized condition produce more iron in a week than it had been 
able to run out in a month, before it came into his hands. He 
discovered that furnace fires can be banked on Saturday night, 
and without Sunday work be opened early Monday morning 
with no necessary loss to the works. He found and developed 
some of the richest mines of iron ore on the extensive property ; 



FOR MONT ALTO. 



313 



and reconstructed the furnace itself, so that it became a won- 
der to iron men, who came from far to see its workings. 

He organized out of the roughest mountaineers a Sunday- 
school and made it the best in the county; keeping it in suc- 
cessful and prosperous operation for more than thirty years. 
An effort had been made in previous times under the old ad- 
ministration to get up a Sunday-school. The Episcopal Bishop 
and a pious lady member had planned for its opening, by ap- 
pointing the former furnace manager as superintendent. After 
having taken on a little extra allowance of whiskey, he had 
gone on a certain Sunday, by the Bishop's appointment to the 
chapel, now well filled with the children of the furnace people. 
Looking at the motley assembly, the first thing he did was to 
raise his gold-headed cane threateningly and with oaths say: 
"You dirty little rascals ! how dare you come into this place of 
worship wearing such torn clothes and with unwashed faces. 
Off, to your homes, every one of you ; and come back next 
Sunday in better condition, or I will not have you in my Sun- 
day-school !" They cleared out ; and came back the next week 
after on their way down having washed up at the force 
pump's running stream; but little better, still leaving streaks 
of black grime on their faces and their clothes. The bishop's 
appointee appeared again, and with even greater wrath at 
their mockery attempt at cleanliness, he drove the whole pack 
out of the chapel. That ended his Sunday-school work. 

Well, on the first Sunday after the new superintendent had 
taken charge of the furnace, he noticed in the morning a knot 
of men and boys gathered on a three cornered plot of grass 
left between the wagon roads. Inquiring what it all meant, 
he was told that they had come out for their usual Sunday 
"sport" and pastime. This it was said, consisted, as it hap- 
pened generally, of cock-fights, then dog-fights, and often 
winding up with men fights. Col. Wiestling immediately 
started down to disperse the boisterous crowd. When they 
saw him approaching they began to call out: "There comes 
the Kurnell ! Make way, byes, for the new shuperintindint !" 



3H 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



and an opening was at once made for him to come into the 
circle and "see the sport." Instead of accepting their kindly 
meant offer, he asked what it all meant for a Sunday morning? 
Being told, he said in brief, that these rough usages must be 
stopped under the new administration. Some protested, as 
having worked hard all week, they must now have some pleas- 
ure. He then laid down the riot act to them and bade the 
whole lot go quietly to their homes ; also telling them, that the 
next Sunday there would be a Sunday-school opened in the 
furnace chapel, to which they, their wives and their children 
should come. 

That was the beginning of the new Sunday-school to which 
he gave about thirty years of valuable service ; and from which, 
after I became the stated supply of the Mont Alto charge, 
were gathered by confirmation some of our best members in 
the congregation. His sisters and, since his death, Elder David 
Knepper, his successor, still labors on in the same good work. 
He believed in young people's work, and encouraged the 
circle of King's Daughters, and the Society of Young Peo- 
ple's Christian Endeavor. The mark of that one man's influ- 
ence and labors is plainly evidenced in this mountain section, 
and some of it may remain in the long years following. For 
some years he gave to former pastors an amount equal to that 
contributed in earlier years by all the other members together 
for the support of the church. He once offered a gold dollar 
to every one of the Sunday-school scholars who would "learn 
by heart" and repeat accurately the answer to the first ques- 
tion of the Heidelberg Catechism. His promise to them cost 
him the next Sunday twenty odd dollars. We buried him in 
the family vault with his pious Reformed fathers in the cem- 
etery at Harrisburg, Pa. I still bear with me some of his 
warm appreciation of my work for eight years of supply 
among the people of the Mont Alto charge; to which we reg- 
ularly traveled in all extremes of weather and over bad roads, 
some ten miles each way. 

The church edifice in the village has been neatly repaired 



FOR MONT ALTO. 



315 



and much improved. I preached at its rededication services. 
A 'beneficiary student for the ministry was sent out from 
among those whom I had baptized and confirmed. A number 
of those received were from families of Dunkards and Seventh 
Day Baptists. One of these became a most reliable and effi- 
cient elder. These sects do not pay their preachers for the free 
gospel ; so there were members in our church who, like them, 
hitherto had not paid anything to the support of the gospel for 
upwards of sixteen years — traveling towards the better land 
without even a "free pass" properly isued. The collapse of 
the furnace interest and some deaths besides that of Col. 
Wiestling, made a difference in the condition of congrega- 
tional finances. They have since sought a cheaper preacher, 
and the church is reaping according to its sowing. 

IN COG. EDITOR. 

For between three and four years thereafter I was in cog. 
the editor again of the Reformed Church Messenger, October, 
1 895- 1 899. Few people knew this, but the editorials for two 
to three columns then on the eighth page, gave the paper pecu- 
liar character, so that many spoke of its great improvement, 
an impetus from which it reaps benefit in following years. Its 
reputation throughout the church was on the rise; and once 
established, it runs well now and therefore it is easy to hear 
often a good word for the church paper. Having established 
a renewed character it continues on with fair momentum. My 
relation during those years was often a cause for fretting and 
worry, especially shortly after the death of Dr. C. G. Fisher, 
the proprietor. Not being at the office, nor in close contact 
with the management, they sometimes made verbal changes, 
or withheld such things as would have gone as intended more 
directly to the hearts of the people and awakened a church 
spirit that now simply slumbers. 

More directly, the paper should make itself popular with the 
people, rather than strong with the few who are more highly 
educated as the ministers and professors. It must not be too 



R-22 



3i6 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



much edited, or run on too high a standard rilled with merely 
learned articles. The church paper, by many thousands ma- 
jority, is to be what will reach the people and do the most 
good to the masses. That 'has been my idea, and the paper 
should bear that impress. It has therefore been many times 
said by those who ought to know that I have the knack of 
making a good and popular and readable church paper, be- 
cause it is best to touch the hearts of the whole membership. 
Up to this time I have not been able to convince the powers 
that be, of the importance of coming up to this ideal, which 
would mean a much larger success for the publication. It 
must not be treated as a theory but as a condition, and hence 
you have witnessed the frequent failures of those in charge. 
My set articles for the Interior, written at request of the late 
editor, Dr. Gray, are well received and paid for at what you 
would regard very fair rates — and welcomed elsewhere, when 
occasionally obtained. This being outside of my own opinion 
the references to such facts are free from self-praise. It is not 
proud ambition to say what you know to be true on the inde- 
pendent testimony of good judges. 

Yet it is plain to me, that if editing were my chief fittedness, 
the Lord would find me a place. So also for pastoral work. 
Or for any special administration. He that believeth in Him 
shall not make haste. We do not need to hurry the course of 
divine Providence, like Jacob tried to do in securing the birth- 
right privilege. Water will find its level, no matter what ob- 
stacles intervene. The only trouble we have felt at such turns 
is that years run on. But the Lord knows the time. 

Once Rev. Dr. M. Kieffer made a plea for western missions 
at one of our synodical meetings. It was while he was profes- 
sor at Tiffin and had the western fever fresh and very bad. He 
was making it a duty for all our young ministers to "go west." 
About that time Iowa was the main State calling for eastern 
help. It was often put so forcibly that some young men be- 
gan to believe if they did not go to Iowa and preach, they 
could hardly be saved. Of course quite a number went out, 



FOR MONT ALTO. 



317 



but not to stay. It was my privilege, then living in Pittsburgh, 
to secure cheap tickets, or a free pass, for the man who from 
time to time was sent as missionary. Often without a com- 
mission, and generally with no salary or very little promised 
and always less paid ; the call for railroad tickets began to at- 
tract Mr. Wm. Thaw's attention. He was a benevolent gen- 
tleman of large means, and president of the main railroad lines 
running west from Pittsburgh. One day he said, while issu- 
ing another pass for a young married preacher and his wife: 
"It seems to me you are sending a good many missionaries to 
Iowa." "Yes, sir," was answered, "quite a number are sent, 
but few remain long in the field." Their pious zeal runs out 
when they realize how poorly it pays, and then from home- 
sickness they returned east on their own tickets. 

Well, to remedy this part of the evil, the theological profes- 
sor above named, in that peculiar argument which was intend- 
ed to be very strong, told the young men that they could make 
on investments from one to three per cent, a month in the west 
if they were only sharp enough to find the places where such 
advantages could be reaped ; while they need not be hindered 
at the same time from preaching. All that a man needed was 
$1000 to begin on, and then watch for opportunities. He did 
not tell how to get the $1000, nor where were the opportunities. 
It is not told either how much he and any of the young men 
were enriched thereby. This per cent, argument was made to 
me also once personally and directly by an elder in favor of 
Kansas City mission. 

If we count the time since my ordination, and deduct the 
years of nonprofessional employment intervening, and then 
allow for the double duties assigned to some of the other 
periods, there will not be any years to set down for entire 
idleness. It is not intended by this to say that there has been 
any work of superorogation ; but that we need not complain 
of the special years when not working at a given post. This is 
some comfort, for while years and health are given, it is my 
desire still to be of some use to the end even if no salary be 



3l8 FOUR SCORE AND MORE 

paid. This was repeatedly made known to missionary super- 
intendents. Let me come to my rest with the harness on. 
Among the Jews, the priest ended his service at so many years. 
So is it in the United States army, or navy, or judiciary. But 
our church constitution requires that a minister must serve in 
his office "as long as he lives," sick or well, old or young, paid 
or stinted. This does not make allowance even for accidents 
or other sorts of disability. 

Thankfully it must be here acknowledged, that my ministe- 
rial life has not been troubled with ill health. In student days, 
there came a siege of fever. Since then, there has been noth- 
ing to speak of except a serious trouble with asthma. That 
came on during the time when exposed to all sorts of weather, 
while collecting funds for the Publication Board. My asth- 
matic attacks were spasmodic, sudden and often severe. There 
were times, when death seemed quite near. Most probably 
there will be no more trying suffering when the end does come. 
This malady lasted in degrees for more than twenty years ; 
and yet no attack ever came on me while in the pulpit, and I 
do not remember of any appointment but once not filled be- 
cause of this trouble. If it came from exposure in the service 
of the Board of Publication, they have done little to relieve it. 
Dr. Hayes has given treatment that sets me well nigh free now 
for more than ten years. 

A CHURCH PROJECT. 

The summer before Dr. Harbaugh was elected professor in 
the Theological seminary he had elaborated a plan for com- 
bining a theological and missionary institute to be established 
somewhere west of Ohio. In his project as repeatedly laid be- 
fore me, he had places especially for Dr. Bausman and myself 
who were expected to join him in its undertaking. It included 
a scheme for a school and farm to be run for support, and for 
mission work in the surrounding large cities of the west; and 
an investment in real estate which by natural growth was to 
furnish all the necessary extra means to sustain the whole en- 



FOR MONT ALTO. 



319 



terprise. Small beginnings, like that of the Roman Catholics 
in the outskirts of the growing cities, would in the course of 
time produce values of no mean proportions. It is a fact that 
Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and 
other places where land was still cheap at that time, have made 
much capital for those who were wise enough to take up then 
ground in the suburbs. 

Being near at hand, and preaching around at outlying sta- 
tions, encouraging immigrants of our church to settle and or- 
ganize in given localities ; and then keep them from disinte- 
gration, when some one stirs up trouble enough to scatter them 
into other churches, would have made large gains and multi- 
plied strength ; which like ripe fruit has fallen for others to 
gather. Had we been able to retain all our natural growth, the 
statistics of the western interests of our Reformed church 
would be far different today. The Presbyterians, Congrega- 
tionalists, Methodists and Baptists are stronger today for our 
neglect to harvest that which was ours to reap, especially from 
Germans and their children. Not too late for some good 
plan now. See examples in Cleveland, Reading and Balti- 
more. 

FIRE. 

August 27, 1897, we na d settled around the table at home for 
a pleasant reading in the evening, when our little Australian 
boy directed attention to a light at the barn. This was a large 
strongly built stone walled structure, eighty feet long. It was 
what is called a Switzer, or bank barn ; with stables and feed 
rooms below and two floors and great mows above. We had 
just threshed the largest part of the wheat and hauled some of 
it away; but there were probably something short of three 
hundred bushels still remaining. Near two hundred bushels 
of oats were just lately put in the bins and from forty to fifty 
tons of prime hay were housed in the bays, while the great 
stack of new straw stood near by in the barnyard. All this in a 
flash was ablaze, inside and out, and burned to utter destruc- 
tion. Hurriedly running up, the fire was found on three sides 



320 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



of the horses in the stable and within less than ten feet from 
the alarmed animals. Speaking encouragingly to them in con- 
fident firmness they were unfastened each one in turn from 
the manger, and led separately with my own arm over the neck 
of each to the door. Outside the straw stack adjoining the over- 
shoot was also burning furiously not more than ten feet from 
their only way of escape. Yet with but little trouble they were 
induced to dash singly by like a shot and reach safety. The 
feed rooms and the other stables were full of fire, feeding on 
the light and inflammable stuff within. The grain bins were 
also now burning, and but few movable articles could be 
reached. All in the great floors above and the mows with con- 
tents together with two wagons, and other farm fixtures were 
beyond saving. The carriage shed and the corn crib contain- 
ing about three hundred bushels, at the north end, was partly 
shielded by the stone gable wall. This we set about saving, 
and it was all that did not burn up. 

Very plentifully had they used lumber in the olden days 
when the barn was built ; and being dry as tinder the devour- 
ing flames reveled in the swift uncontrollable destruction. The 
great light shone out in the evening gloom so that for miles 
around people came to witness the conflagration, until there 
were hundreds congregated shouting unmeaning orders and 
not doing the least possible useful work to prevent further 
damage. It was difficult to get any who had buckets of water, 
to sprinkle what was near and threatened. The house and its 
contents were saved, and we felt thankful for the immediate 
shelter and safety of the family for the night, and the live 
stock ranged the fields. 

Four months later at midnight, January 4th, 1898, we were 
awakened by a glare of light in our bed room. Looking out 
we found the sheds that had escaped the former big fire were 
now in a sheet of flame, as well as the new frame stable built 
for the animals; a large rick of fodder adjoining, containing 
two thousand bundles, was also burning. It was a close call 
again for the cattle. The rescue of horse and cows was a 



FOR MONT ALTO. 



321 



desperate undertaking for myself alone, as no neighbors were 
yet aroused. The bedding litter was burning under some of the 
feet of the cattle and the thick smoke inside their closed stable 
almost blinded and choked me each time I re-entered to untie 
another singed cow. All were however rescued, costing me 
the loss of one side of my beard and hair, with blistered hands 
and a badly scorched face on the side of which a burn as 
broad as your hand left its painful mark. Only three neigh- 
bors were attracted later at dead of night to the fire. For 
more than a day our scorched and shivering animals wandered 
about with no shelter from the weather and not a bite of straw 
or hay, or fodder to satisfy their hunger. Then one kind 
neighbor sold me seventy-five bundles of fodder ; and I hastily 
changed a pig-pen into a shed for the cows. The horse was 
sent out to board at another farm. The house was also again 
saved. 

Partial insurance covered some of the losses. But the insur- 
ance companies thereafter fearing other incendiary acts, can- 
celled their policies on the house and other property covered 
from jeopardy by fire so that we began to feel lonely and help- 
less. It was a strange feeling, and shows how heartless the 
world is, unless it can make something without much serious 
risk. Right good neighbors, as that word goes, were afraid 
to befriend us, even to the caring for the horse for pay, lest 
the fire fiends should take revenge on them ; and their own time 
of loss might come. One not far from us had the barn burned 
three times in two years; another twice, and a number once. 
Fires of stables in the town occurred nearly every Saturday 
afternoon, for a long while. Incendiary fires became epidemic. 
They were certainly not all by the same hands ; but because it 
had been done by others, any one bad enough who wished to 
wreak spite, took this common way of getting even with the 
party to be thus visited. 



XXIII. 



Some Appeal Cases 

ENERALLY appeals come before the church courts with 
* dirty faces. Always unwelcome, often exceedingly un- 
pleasant, or positively disagreeable. Not one in many but 
should have been settled before being brought to such a hear- 
ing. They are time consumers, patience killers, and seldom in 
fact receive a full or impartial examination. Yet some appeals 
are not only necessary evils, but help also to promote justice 
for persons and churches ; also developing a clearer sense of 
constitutional provisions in favor of the right. Only once has 
there been in my long life an appeal case taken for myself; it 
was made my duty however, to represent the defense several 
times for individual interests of other persons, and also of 
churches. It is generally better to stand for the defendant 
than to be in the prosecution ; that is, better take the part of the 
under dog. A single exception is remembered; when the 
Eastern Synod at its Hagerstown meeting in the later "six- 
ties" appointed me officially in its name to prosecute its charges 
against the veteran editor of the Reformed Church Monthly. 
While the case was won for the Synod in a heated controver- 
sial contest and trial, yet the bitterness of its results lasted in 
personal grievances for years. But to the eternal honor of the 
defendant, Dr. Bomberger, it is here recorded that before his 
death he had mastered the sore feeling, and even showed me 
personal and helpful kindness, while president of the General 
Synod at Lebanon by ruling fairly some law points in favor of 
my appeal, then before the court. Principles of law are always 
claimed on one side or the other to be involved in appeals. No 
two are alike, yet they can be classified in formal principles. 

The first case to be mentioned as falling to my hands is that 
of Elder A. B. Wingert against the Greencastle consistory, tak- 
en by appeal to the Mercersburg Classis. He was a well known 



SOME APPEAL CASES. 



323 



active elder in the church, treasurer of the Seminary, member 
of the Board of Publication, and often on standing committees 
of the Synods. He was a sound debater, safe counsellor, and 
influential in much public church work. He had occasion to 
admonish his pastor in a consistory meeting in a given case 
and told him that his action was "more like that of a wolf 
than of a shepherd." For this, he was called to account, as 
an act improper from an elder towards his spiritual superior. 
The elder claimed to be ordained to a ministerial office and also 
in the line of official duty ; and holding his words to be true 
refused to withdraw the offensive statement. 

Without affording the elder an opportunity to prove the as- 
sertion made, he was put upon trial, charged with lack of re- 
spect for the pastor and other similar wrong things ; and finally 
he was suspended from office and expelled from church mem- 
bership. This was done by the "Spiritual Council/' consisting 
in this case of pastor and one elder. 

An appeal against this sentence was taken to the classis. 
This case came on for a hearing at my first meeting with that 
body in 1883, and the classis appointed me to represent Elder 
Wingert. On short time for preparation, the main point taken 
was on the right of an ordained elder in the consistory to call 
in question any improper act in the official conduct of a fellow- 
member, even if it were the head of that body itself. The 
pastor was not so spiritually superior in office to the elder as to 
be above the reach of sincere fraternal criticism, admonition 
and exhortation to duty. The ministry just then in the church 
discussions had been held up in its high official character. And 
we claimed that the eldership according to our liturgical or- 
dination and the constitution was a real part of the true minis- 
try too in the Reformed church. If that position were correct, 
then there was no cause for extreme discipline, such as sus- 
pending and excommunicating an elder for courage and fidel- 
ity in referring on good and proper occasion to the conduct of 
his pastor, when considering in consistory the spiritual condi- 
tion of the church. 



324 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



Other points, such as need of fair trial, etc., were not press- 
ed. The classis sustained the appeal, and restored the elder 
from suspension and excommunication. The defeated pastor 
then appealed to the Potomac Synod ; and also took the ground 
that a sentence of a lower court stood till reversed by the 
higher court appealed to. But that is just what the classis did 
in the Wingert appeal here sustained and so reversed lower 
action. The pastor did not however recognize the restoration 
ordered by the classis and so improperly held Elder Wingert as 
still under sentence and he was kept excluded from the com- 
munion of the church and office of the eldership. In this status 
and condition he soon thereafter died. His dead occurred just 
before the case could finally reach the Synod for further adjudi- 
cation. As attorney for Elder Wingert, whose dead body I 
helped along with Dr. Apple to bury, I claimed that the resto- 
ration by the classis was complete, putting him rectus in eccle- 
sia till the Synod decided otherwise. And as there was no sen- 
tence then left in force by that action, therefore the new appeal 
by the pastor, as against the decision of the classis, found the 
elder restored both in office and in church membership ; so that 
really he had died in the communion of saints. In the absence of 
the pastor, word was sent for me by the dying man, and on his 
death bed, and the Lord's supper was administered to him. 
This was reported afterwards to the classis and approved, and 
the consistory's record of suspension and excommunication as 
it still stood on the book, was ordered to be expunged. 

This appeal case then settled this much of church law : That 
of the co-ordinate relations of pastor and elder; and further 
the fact that a restoration by the higher court left no sentence 
from below involving suspension from which the defendant 
had been relieved by that act. Hence the appeal from this 
act of the classis did not continue to be again put in force, or 
renewed as the previous penalty of a former sentence by the 
lower court was now reversed. 

This same pastoral charge for years was fruitful of appeals ; 
and I was again employed later to represent two deacons who 



SOME APPEAL CASES. 



3 2 5 



had suffered similar suspension from the same hands. They had 
led in a large petition for the pastor's removal. One had been 
the accepted and trusted Sunday-school superintendent for a 
dozen years, and the other was a wheel horse in all hard con- 
sistory work, as in raising money for back standing salary, etc. 
They crossed the pastor's will for cause, petitioning classis to 
dissolve the pastoral relation ; and refusing to retract certain 
true things which they maintained, they were sentenced to sus- 
pension by the "pastor and only one elder" assembled as 
"Spiritual Council." The disciplined men carried the case to 
classis, and were easily restored. Then it went on up from the 
Potomac Synod to the General Synod, where by a stampede 
under certain technical misrepresentations, the case was lost. 
It was however afterwards reconsidered by the Greencastle 
consistory itself under another pastor, and all records thereof 
unanimously rescinded because of its misapprehension in the 
higher court, and the officers were restored to usefulness later, 
one as elder, the other as trustee. 

A still more flagrant case from the same pastoral charge, 
soon after, was the "Shook appeal." The cashier of the First 
National Bank was assessed personally without his consent, 
by the pastor to the amount of $150 towards the payment of 
a large debt of the church which had been growing for some 
years ; and which if not provided for to the amount of about 
$1600, the classis had resolved it would be proper to send a 
committee to inquire why the congregation was growing so 
weak as to threaten the loss of the parsonage property pledged 
by an overawed consistory on notes to the pastor for back 
salary. The bank cashier declined to pay the assessment. Then 
followed various disputes as to veracity and double dealing. 
On the charge of "lying, dishonesty, filthy lucre and contum- 
acy," this man, by the "Spiritual Council," i. e., the pastor and 
one elder, was excommunicated. It seems he had indicated as 
was charged more willingness to pay such a sum to have the 
pastor go away than to secure his continuance. This was the 
gravest offence. 



326 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



He appealed to the classis. It came on for a hearing at the 
annual meeting held in that charge in 1893. Again came my 
appointment by the classis as advocate for the party appealing 
against the wrong. A mass of testimony specially made for 
the case was produced from the minute book of the consistory. 
Witnesses were brought forward however to show that the 
records themselves were not reliable, as they had been "doc- 
tored," interlined and put in special form by one man himself, 
not by official action ; some not having been adopted at all by 
the consistory, and some contained what had been illegal. No 
witness testified that the accused ever put anything on the 
subscription list or ever said he would pay $150, as the pastor 
had assessed it. His affidavit denied ever having promised to 
pay anything towards the debt for old salary in form, and also 
claimed the right to make his gifts without assessment, only 
by his own voluntary act. The charges of falsehood, dishon- 
esty, filthy lucre and contumacy were all overruled and the 
appeal was sustained entire. 

The action of the classis also carried with it an order to 
have the consistory appoint a committee of its own members 
to correct the minutes and erase therefrom any made up parts 
foisted in from unauthentic sources. It was found that a large 
part of the minutes must be thus expurgated. The right to do 
that, it was claimed, rests on the privilege and duty of any de- 
liberative body to correct and amend its own minutes, when it 
becomes clear that mistakes, errors and wrong entries have 
been made. This is however a law point on which the General 
Synod has not as yet ruled. 

These three cases of appeal all having been carried against 
the same party, were no doubt greatly irritating to his feelings, 
and he took ground personally against the counsel on the side 
opposed to his positions. The case also in the classis by open 
inquiry in regard to the danger threatening the sale and loss 
of the parsonage property for notes held by the pastor on back 
standing salary, confessing discharge and ordering the same 
to be put on record to bar all further claim for the same, be- 



SOME APPEAL CASES. 



327 



came a cause of additional bitterness against me, the counsel 
appointed iby the classis. We had pressed it to an open and 
clear acknowledgment, requiring it to be publicly declared that 
all those notes should be covered by special subscriptions to be 
obtained by the pastor himself for that very purpose. This set 
the parsonage property free from possible sale. But he told an 
eastern elder : "If it had not been for that big headed Russell, 
there would have been $800 more" in his favor against Green- 
castle. That service cost me dear in subsequent hostile perse- 
cution, culminating in another appeal in which the disturbing 
pastor involved me. 



XXIV. 



Appeal at the General Synod 

T TNDERSTAND clearly this appeal to the General Synod 
^ is based on a personal and also a general grievance, be- 
cause of an action of the Potomac Synod held at Carlisle or- 
dering the Mercersburg Classis to do over what it had already 
of its own motion, in the discharge of its duty after full and 
patient consideration, finally concluded. To reopen that busi- 
ness in obedience to the Potomac Synod's order, was unlawful 
and injurious personally to me. The action of the Synod was 
based on a complaint of Rev. C. Cort against the negative de- 
cision of the classis adverse to a paper referring to "rumors 
against a minister." The classis in preliminary inquiry found 
absolutely nothing jusitfying further proceedings on the con- 
tents of said paper. There was no case, no findings, no sen- 
tences. Hence the complaint to the Synod against the classis 
for its negative or non-action was groundless in toto. 

It was of course the duty of the delegates from that classis 
to defend its conclusions, standing simply on the official copy 
of its minutes. If they had explained and stood to these, that 
alone were sufficient to squelch the unlawful and rancorous 
"complaint." But incompetency or fear in the classis' repre- 
sentatives left the Synod in the dark to be stampeded and 
commanded by the unrestrained accuser, to commit wrong 
to the classis itself and a personal injury to me, against whom 
no finding had been sustained ; in stirring up afresh false ru- 
mors which had been by all right and law forever quieted by 
the refusal of the classis after full examination to consider 
them having no scintilla of truth to show any reason in the first 
instance for entertaining the paper for fuller trial. 

The delegates of the classis present at the Synod however 
did not appeal in protection of law from the Synod's action; 
and the good souls thought that it would in the end involve me 



AFTER WINNING APPEAL BEFORE THE GENERAL SYNOD 
BY ABOUT 200 MATORITY. 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 329 

as well as the classis and it was therefore my duty more than 
theirs to have been at the Synod as the defendant against the 
said complaint which was against classis, not me. And the 
scared members of the classis in fear of threats of the com- 
plainant, began to hold special meetings afterwards and pre- 
pare to obey the unlawful order of the Synod, though its action 
was plainly nugatory, empty of law and full of evil and all 
unrighteousness. My recourse was therefore properly to the 
General Synod, so that justice and right might stand forth in 
the light. 

Points as to personal rights and self-protection called for 
this appeal to the General Synod against an action of the Po- 
tomac Synod. A complaint was lodged by the Greencastle 
pastor against the Mercersburg Classis as to a false rumor 
brought to its attention and declared after thorough examina- 
tion that the paper was unworthy of further action. After pa- 
tient deliberation, the classis by a unanimous vote, except two 
nays — interested parties — the complainant and his elder, saw 
fit to dismiss the whole matter from all further constitutional 
inquiry "without detriment," to the minister named in the 
paper. The complainant, who had no personal relation what- 
ever thereto, wanted the Potomac Synod on his ex-parte state- 
ment and against and contrary to the official records of the 
classis, to compel a new hearing of the so-called "scandalous 
rumors" already proven to be absolutely unfounded. And 
such an order from the Synod was passed. 

If this order were obeyed it would wrong the classis and me. 
To avoid such perversion of justice, an appeal was taken as 
soon as informed of it to the General Synod. A -rambling 
paper, signed by two elders, had been laid before my classis 
referring indefinitely to "scandalous rumors" about my treat- 
ment of neighbors and animals. It was referred to a special 
committee for a formal report. It was then shown that the 
pastor of these two elders had himself drawn the paper and 
persuaded them to present it to the classis. On the day set for 



330 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



a public hearing on "fama clamosa," information was in open 
classis repeatedly called for, but none was given. 

One of the signers then met the committee at their request. 
He gave no word of adverse information — had never heard of 
the rumors hinted at in the document till he came to this meet- 
ing and his preacher here told some of the ministers of them, 
but for himself he knew not of anything wrong even on pub- 
lic rumor. The other signer did not meet the committee any- 
where, nor give the slightest information as to the contents of 
the paper. At a later time he personally swore out an affida- 
vit before an officer of the law to the effect that his preacher 
"had lied to him." The classis after reasonable further inquiry 
by a yea and nay vote, dismissed the whole matter of the sup- 
posed "scandalous rumors." The Synod, as above stated how- 
ever ordered a rehearing. The chairman of its committee 
wrote me that the action of the Synod "was not constitutional, 
but it was to prevent the airing of stench by that man." The 
stated clerk also wrote me during the Synod to come and "de- 
fend the classis" or they would let the "complainant do as he 
pleased"; and so, for some bad reason, they did. Against that 
action of the Potomac Synod taken at Carlisle, an appeal was 
therefore taken by me to the General Synod. 

Through overawing fear of the complainant doubtless, after 
that meeting of the Potomac Synod, though my appeal had 
been taken regularly from its action to the General Synod and 
thereby had lifted the matter and halted all further proceed- 
ings, yet the classis actually under the order called a special 
meeting to try the same matter again. A committee of the 
classis now sought for something in those old false rumors, 
which at the full annual meeting after days of patient, wide 
and thorough examination had been judged groundless. Then 
also a roving commission was sent to ferret the whole land and 
make exciting inquiries among unsuspecting people. For so 
doing, my Mont Alto consistory gave notice to desist in their 
irregular process till the General Synod would act; warning 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 



331 



that if they did not heed this notice the civil courts would be 
invoked. 

The self-constituted prosecutor, without notice to me, had 
also actually called a miscellaneous public meeting of all sorts of 
people at a Waynesboro hotel, and there discussed his libelous 
paper publicly without rule or church law. To befog the simple 
people, he threw out a sort of drag net and discussed deferences 
to sins in articles 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 105, 108, 109, 1 10, etc., as 
though all the crimes therein forbidden as real offences had 
been charged in the complaint against me. The adversary of 
the church could not have done a worse diabolical piece of 
work. 

All settled down to the rumor of driving a lame mare for 
some months when going to preach as supply at Mont Alto 
and a threat made against a drunken tenant. The limping 
mare was not sore or hurt in limb by use, for all had long been 
healed and in that condition she jumped a post and rail fence 
five times in one day. Our regular driving horse had died, 
and the small income from the Mont Alto supply did not afford 
to buy another. The vengeful prosecutor had it all his own 
way at Synod, and the Synod's mistaken action at his request 
ordering the classis to reinvestigate what it had fully ignored 
and "dismissed without detriment" to me, was the 
wrong done, calling for this appeal against its command to the 
classis. The "fama clamosa" only came to flimsy existence 
after these mistakes were made by the order of Synod. 

I. The first point laid before the General Synod was my 
thirty-six years of useful mission work. This alone should 
secure a presumption of ministerial record not to be set aside 
by a slanderous charge which was invented and found not 
valid before the classis, where much of my life was known. The 
man now acting as my active prosecuting enemy had previous- 
ly and repeatedly been defended by me in his own numerous 
and notorious trials in the church courts east and west; but 
Who now owed me a grudge, because of having been officially 
R-23 



332 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



detailed to conduct three other Greencastle appeal cases with 
success against him. 

False and flimsy rumors as far as there were any such at- 
taching to me were first started by himself, only as it was 
shown and aired lately at the classis to the ears of a few other 
ministers — and this he called fama clamosa. But no one of 
these brethren informed me of this ministerial assassination, 
and the paper of his elders came as a thunder clap. The bogus 
paper laid before the classis was prepared by himself after his 
defeat in some of the other cases, and he pressed his elders to 
sign and submit it. No charge however is true until proven. 
But ill reports against a minister, true or false, must be proper- 
ly investigated. Such only are to be tried by the classis, the 
sole judge, when it deems such trial necessary to preserve the 
purity of the church. No man needs to prove himself innocent 
on a false rumor. Those who make the charge are to prove the 
guilt. On this point in my appeal is my personal right. 

The largest liberty in classis in favor of any rumor was giv- 
en and courted. The accusers' wild and vague statement found 
no basis or charge calling for trial. Committee and open 
classis alike could discover absolutely nothing, and finally after 
two different days set time for a full hearing, the paper was 
"laid on the table without prejudice to Dr. Russell." How 
could the Potomac Synod then on such minutes of the record 
by any possible law or gospel send back to classis an order to 
do this negative work over? The classis itself as grand inquest 
threw the whole paper out of court. No one knew of these 
three or five year old matters till at this meeting one elder 
heard his preacher tell the story. There was no trial, no sen- 
tence, no judgment. The Synod had no power to order new 
proceedings before the classis which was the only judge of its 
merits, whether for trial or not. 

The satanic advocate did not himself even say much in the 
open session when the classis was calling for evidence. Nor 
did the zealous prosecuting preacher "vindicate purity" by ut- 
tering any testimony himself before the classis, though he was 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 



333 



challenged to do so. The other signer of the paper, avoided 
taking any part in the investigation by going home before the 
set time came for the hearing, and he subsequently gave as 
before stated, an affidavit, sworn out before a civil magistrate, 
that his pastor had lied, and deceived him by false statements 
in this and other matters. 

The only pretext for another trial then, which was of course 
unlawful, was set upon said preacher's statements made in the 
Synod, that all the witnesses after three separate days dealing 
with it in classis, to find any "fama clamoso" were not heard. 
No one was refused a hearing of any testimony. The alleged 
facts, if any there were, did not lie beyond the easy reach of 
the tribunal then and there sitting in the very midst of the 
community where the defendant resided, and where such ru- 
mors if real, could most easily be traced, if the vague contents 
of that paper could in any manner be said to be based on truth. 
No other roving committee need therefore according to our 
constitution (Article 101) be sent with a synodical authority 
in commission to gather what was already here, if' it existed 
at all; or to stir up "outside" strife. The minister and the 
purity of the church were then by the sufficiently thorough in- 
vestigation absolutely and legally clear, by the non-finding of 
any charge in the classis which for several days had given to 
the subject in the most public way possible full ventilation. 
All gainsayers must henceforth as to this have their mouths 
stopped. Malignant and self-appointed prosecutors running 
their ill-concealed enmity through complaint, appeal, retrial 
and all sorts of church suits, can go no further, except as vile 
slanders. 

Ecclesiastical barratry in this matter, however, knows no 
limits ; and like necessity, as to this, it knows no law. It is 
simply illegal and devilish. It is against this mischievous 
power that his appeal is made to the General Synod for the 
self-protection of all. Let the voice of this highest church 
court go out ordering this bad and unchristian work forever 
to stop. The General Synod's decrees must in its decision 



334 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



interpret and settle here these rules of church government. One 
of these it is asked now to make plain : That the classis is the 
only court competent under the constitution to examine into 
the moral character of its ministers; and that having duly 
passed upon a particular or given charge, without finding in 
its honest judgment ground for trial — no Synod has authority 
to order a new hearing in idem re. That sets an authentic seal 
on the record made by the classis dismissing the slanderous 
paper forever, and so clearing me. 

II. Another reason for my appeal is that new, specific and 
unlawful conditions were attached to the order given by the 
Synod to the classis. The Synod, if it could lawfully give any 
order in a matter at such a stage, erred in ordering the classis 
to do over 'what it had in its best judgment thoroughly, as its 
minutes show, already once done. But still more, on the ille- 
gal order, sending back a matter of original complaint already 
thoroughly examined and finally adjudicated by the classis, as 
unworthy of further action, as a so-called case and providing 
for "testimony to be submitted/' without limit as to what kind 
and on what ground the Lord only knows! If the classis by 
its finding had first made it a "case" requiring in its good 
judgment a matter for judicial trial ; and if it had taken action 
on the issue joined, in a sentence of conviction instead of clear- 
ing the accused of the charge, it might then possibly under re- 
view of an appeal, have been remanded for another hearing, 
under certain new aspects of a given case. But I was not even 
one counted as "accused" in that sense before the Synod. And 
when there was absolutely no "case" worthy of being taken up 
for trial made out hitherto, by the original action of the classis, 
the Synod had no possible show of moral or lawful right to say 
even carelessly there was a "case," and then direct the classis 
to give "the case" another trial with open door to whatever 
"testimony to be submitted" which might be made up without 
limit of law. No civil court in the land would do that, without 
ground for previous proceedings on some finding of a grand 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 



335 



jury. Sustaining this appeal overrules the mistaken order of 
the Potomac Synod. 

III. No appeal from a lower to a higher court can be made 
on the ground of non action below. That is broad primal law. 
You cannot appeal against any court on a negative action by 
the grand inquest. Nor can the higher church judicatory 
make a non action in the court below, a "case" ; so that it can 
be "sent back as a case," for a positive sentence. Neither the 
law, nor the Lord, nor the church demands such a course to 
try and try till a man is condemned. A decree of a Synod 
therefore, like the order given at the session at Carlisle, breaks 
down one's highest constitutional rights. Until the grand 
jury indicts an accused individual on a specific charge, and the 
court of original jurisdiction finds thereon a verdict of guilty 
in a criminal matter, the higher court has nothing whatever 
to do or to say in remanding the "case" on some individual's 
request ; so that something more be heard on "testimony to be 
submitted" below. This mistaken decree of the Potomac 
Synod therefore gave bad precedence for the self-appointed 
prosecutor after its unlawful action to go roaming over the 
land, making and writing forced new statements to the damage 
of a minister on such "testimony to be submitted," as could 
thus be obtained by importuning signers ; or when they refused 
to sign, he for them personally signed his own self-drawn, de- 
faming papers with the name of these simple people ; who were 
supposed to tell merely the sheerest "hearsay" of some other 
story teller like that fiendish "advocatus Diabolus" himself. 
That might be made a backbiting attack on evidence enough to 
hang an innocent dog, on such post facto manufactured fama 
clamosa. Sustain the appeal for this reason. 

IV. The Potomac Synod's record referring back to the 
classis is such as to do me hereafter much personal wrong in 
recorded history. Though the dirty smirch may not stick, be- 
cause it rests on nothing, yet the suspicious mark is left in the 
printed minutes with no reference to show how the docket was 
cleared. It places me there under a charge which was by my 



336 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE 



classis after a full examination wiped out because there was 
nothing in any rumors "detrimental" to me. Yet the synodical 
record, without a scintilla of testimony or any hearing proper 
at all in my absence nor of my knowledge implies that on some 
"testimony to be submitted" to establish a charge should be 
further heard; and in so far censures the classis. Now that 
action as it stands on the minutes violates a principle of law 
as well as wrongs me in my ecclesiastical rights and smirches 
the records of classis. It presumes there is something yet in a 
charge which was examined and found baseless. 

But the original court, having once refused to make out a 
true bill, after all possible effort to find evidence, and which had 
by its vote dismissed the whole matter, cannot be called for an- 
other hearing of the same in further proceedings. No man 
can be tried more than once on the same charge. While the 
minister referred to was willing and ready indeed at the first 
instance in the classis to have all rumors thoroughly ventilated, 
examined and investigated ; yet he must protest against having 
it go on repeatedly and forever. Let me strenuously object in 
self-defence, to be held up to public gaze on the same bogus 
rumors and surely not to be slanderously pilloried in the syn- 
odical minutes. My appeal to the General Synod, if sustained, 
rules in my favor and relieves me of this wrong record. 

V. This appeal is pressed further in favor of general right- 
eousness. If indeed personal and voluntary statements were 
made in full from myself before the classis, more than any 
others could be found to give light as referring circumstan- 
tially to any ground for the "scandalous rumors" raised by the 
false and manufactured paper, it was to give my classis the 
fullest possible knowledge, more than my enemy himself had 
been able otherwise to produce. Nor was the law of time 
limit by lapse of years claimed to screen myself. But if thus 
willing then, the painful thing should now be over once for all. 

For instance, if some boaster wagers that he can throw you 
across a muddy ditch, and on trying fails so that the effort 
comes far enough short, and souses you into the dirty water, 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 33? 

it were amazing folly indeed for him to claim repeated throws 
under the bald pretext that he could possibly do it eventually 
if only he were allowed to make the trial often enough to prove 
his ability to do what he claimed. Whoever would agree thus 
to let him make his wager good, would be the bigger fool. One 
ecclesiastical or legal test is enough. Let me claim the General 
Synod's protection against all lawless repeated efforts to keep 
on as Dr. Spangler Kieffer argued, "investigating" me publicly 
as it were in the use of a fine-tooth comb, on either "fama 
clamosa" or personally made rumors, to show before the pub- 
lic that a minister may after all be lousy. 

Three to five years intervened before any breath of rumors 
was discovered. That were enough even if they were likely 
true to have outlawed them; but no such plea was claimed. 
Long dead, if ever alive. Eggs may get too old to hatch, but if 
stale they can be used, if thrown, to befoul men. So the drunken 
ex-tenant difficulty was beyond the statute four years or more, 
though it had been only in self-justification defending property. 
And the use of the lame mare in serving the Mont Alto charge 
five years ago on a salary not enough in a whole year to buy a 
good horse, was atoned for then in penance of the pastor's 
drives. But neither these were in continuance now. 

This appeal therefore to the General Synod demands protec- 
tion for the present and future against the careless and lawless 
order of the Potomac Synod. It is respectfully asked, that for 
the reasons given, in the name of law and gospel, you sustain 
me in peace and righteousness. You will thereby rule on the 
following points : 

1. Rule: That a Classis only has original jurisdiction of the 
morals in conduct and acts of its own ministers, in the first 
instance; and in all issues it may judge by proper inquest 
whether their personal and official conduct demands trial or 
not. If on due investigation, the classis finds no cause for a 
trial in any matter brought to its attention, then no Synod may 
order new proceedings on the same. 

2. Rule. That "fama clamosa" is not such a hidden thing 



33* 



FOUR SCORE AND MORfi 



as to require days and weeks of search at large, when it is said 
to exist a long time right before you. In its very nature, it 
must, if there be fama clamosa at all, be public and largely 
known. 

3. Rule. That the classis, having publicly and fairly chal- 
lenged a complainant or self-appointed prosecutor to pro- 
duce any such rumors, claimed to be public; and having af- 
forded full time and opportunity for him to discover the same 
to the inquiring classis ; then, if nothing be found that calls for 
a trial, the matter of course falls. And all such pretended and 
false reports are forever quieted and wiped out. There is 
therefore here no "case." 

4. Rule. That any self-constituted strolling investigator, or 
an illegally appointed committee, undertaking as rovers to bur- 
row into the privacy and peace of a community or family, and 
thus unduly excite and agitate ill feeling by creating hurtful 
talk against a minister, by making, retailing or publishing ru- 
mors quieted by official act of the classis — exceeds the duties 
and requirements covered by the constitution as to maintain- 
ing purity. 

5. Rule also: That the classis having once sifted such al- 
leged rumors, and finding nothing at all worthy of a charge 
for trial, and in the exercise of its full right and duty having 
dismissed the whole matter "without detriment" to the person 
assailed, against whom there was no judgment, it cannot be 
ordered by any Synod to make room again for a possible trial 
by another process formally of the same. That is not re- 
quired either in the interest of religion, or for the purity of 
the church, and surely not to gratify an enemy holding a 
grudge. 

The Decision. — Without debate, the General Synod pro- 
ceeded to vote. Out of the whole body of delegates, upwards 
of two hundred, on a yea and nay record, only twelve refused 
to sustain the appeal, and some were non liquets. The Presi- 
dent of the General Synod then announced officially : "That by 
an overwhelming majority, the Russell appeal was sustained." 



APPEAL AT THE GENERAL SYNOD. 



339 



The strong array of attorneys, advocates and self-appointed 
managers against me were, in chief, Rev. Dr. J. Spangler 
Kieffer, Rev. Dr. J. C. Bowman and Rev. Dr. C. Cort. Their 
stinging defeat was not much salved over with the above given 
very meager minority of the whole vote. One historical fact 
may be yet mentioned : Rev. Dr. John M. Shick, of special com- 
mittee to examine and report on the regularity of the appeal 
papers, and before anything was heard from the plaintiff's 
side, expressed in advance voluntarily his opinion that the pro- 
posed appeal was not worthy of any consideration and moved 
that the committee recommend that it be thrown out of court. 
The big majority vote in favor of the appeal shows the value 
of his premature opinion. Having been my own sole attorney, 
and the righteous Lord my defender, there was nothing fur- 
ther to settle but to thank God for the favorable result. 

The points established by the decision of the appeal in my 
favor, help to make clear the law for such rulings in the lower 
courts. It repaid me also for the wearing tax on feelings and 
patience of the whole General Synod in bringing the vexing 
issue to a triumphant conclusion. My family too, having been 
partakers of all the persecutions and malicious wrong, were of 
course sincerely gratified. We all joined in the heartfelt offer- 
ing to the dear Lord for His guiding care, defence and de- 
liverance. 

The effect then of the General Synod's action on my appeal 
nullifies the Potomac Synod's unlawful order to the Mercers- 
burg Classis. The work of the disturbing committee of the 
classis acting under the wrong order of the Potomac Synod 
was stayed and its bad work ruled out forever. Those who 
had refused to take part in the diabolical behests were relieved 
of all fear of threatened harm to themselves ; and the main 
bull dozer found his favorite occupation, for once, gone. In 
the appeals before noticed, he had been invariably the main ac- 
cuser. Himself, and one elder constituting the "Spiritual 
Council," swearing, or giving himself the form of an oath, so 
he could testify in his own court, making needed testimony to 



340 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



carry his charges, ruling out statements of defence, then de- 
ciding his own cases, and finally as judge giving sentence in 
his court against the helpless defendants ; that sort of court 
made trouble which had to be met and settled, as is hoped 
forever. 



XXV. 



Means of Living 

TX/TANY have wondered how it was that our dependence 
has not been contingent on income from current salary 
in the service of the church. Even when serving a regular 
place, the salary has not been as a rule a full one. For 
some three years of my ministry, it was gratis, or next to 
nothing. Only for a few years of my whole official life was 
there anything like a moderate salary. My beginning at Pitts- 
burgh after my ordination was on a $500 commission, good 
part of which was paid by the mission ; and at no time in my 
service even after the church was built, and the congregation 
self-supporting, was it more than seven hundred. In fact more 
than for my fifty years active ministry it has averaged less 
than five hundred dollars, at times only $300 or less, per an- 
num. It kept us of course living in very moderate measure, 
and always required continuous self-denial for myself and my 
family, and then it alone did not always reach our needs. 

Some have guessed that most likely other substantial means 
had come to us by inheritance or speculation. But really, not 
any of our substance has come from either of these sources ; 
nor was our living made, as the above will show, off of any 
fat salary in the hard years of church work. At the outset, 
my life was under the stern stress of poverty. Early Dr. 
Franklin's motto : "By industry we thrive," became a rule, and 
necessity enforced economy. It is some satisfaction to reflect, 
that the church was not taxed in any way for what we have. 
Even my education was obtained by self-struggles, without a 
dollar of beneficiary aid having ever been received, or asked 
for. Still I am very favorable to beneficiary help, and have 
given evidence of this in numerous cases, mostly in secret. 
Speculation was indeed in one case tried; along with many 
other simple minded people in our Reformed church, we dip- 



34^ 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



ped in the Baker Silver Mining Company's stock; this as all 
know now sorely was a stupendous failure — not for me only, 
but for the many, even widows and girls as well as poor 
preachers, who fooled a way their money in the same way. 

No; not off the church indeed has my living and property 
come. It has always seemed a shame, if not a sin, to take un- 
earned money as salary and pile up a fortune from what the 
people give for the gospel. Inheritance is quite another thing ; 
but neither has that from any quarter come to me. However, 
the Lord has given me blessing in fair business tact, cultivated 
by early necessity; so that incidental work could be made to 
prosper without interfering with my ministerial calling. My 
first small savings were invested in some western land, unim- 
proved, sold me by a friend who doubled his money on it. This 
was exchanged by me later, for a city lot. That was sold at an 
advance ; after marriage the South avenue cottage in Alle- 
gheny was bought for a modest home to save rent, where my- 
self and wife lived alone. It made one feel good to set foot on 
our own ground. It was the first home ever possessed since 
the family's loss in my early childhood. The first year of 
gratis service in the Allegheny mission, however cost us $900 
for living expenses, all the profit made on the sale of that prop- 
erty was thus used for the church. But the next home, bought 
on Sturgeon street, second bank of the river, to take us out of 
the reach of high water when the river overflowed, made up 
for what was thus apparently consumed. It cost $3000, and 
after being somewhat improved was sold, when we had to re- 
move to Philadelphia in church work, for $7500 cash. Our 
Thirteenth street house in Philadelphia, we left after the small 
pox infection by the death of my brother. It was sold at a 
small loss. Then we returned to Pittsburgh. 

Our Edgwood property then, was the next purchase for a 
home, in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. This became our 
welcome retreat from the small pox plague. But in order the 
better to serve the Zion mission, East End, Pittsburgh, which 
had come into our hands, in less than two years from our pur- 



TREK'S END— OUR HOME. 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



343 



chase, we had to sell this delightful suburban place and move 
up into the city at East Liberty. The short time we had held 
it, brought quite an increase in value ; so that we sold it at a 
net gain of several thousand dollars. This large profit was not 
an operation made in any sense as a speculation. It came to 
us without plan, simply in the path of duty and service to the 
church. The East End property however which we next se- 
cured while in the service of that mission, had to be sacrificed 
at a heavy loss, after our hasty removal in obeying the Board's 
call to Washington, D. C. In return for this sacrifice made 
for that church, we had to bear most shameful treatment from 
the Bi-Synodic management of missions, before the end of 
the second year. The loss by that remove was greater than the 
whole amount of salary received for the service while in Wash- 
ington, which was so unnecessarily brought to an end. In 
that city we rented by the month, making payment always in 
advance. This continued after our discharge, as well as living 
expenses, for over six months waiting and hoping for a call 
elsewhere, after the summary action of the Board. 

When we retreated from the Palatinate College storm, a 
farm property was bought for cash near Waynesboro for a 
home shelter. We expected, that with our habitual practice of 
frugal living we would at least be free now for the time of 
necessary sojourn, from all pecuniary pressure. But in an 
hour when we did not think, the evil of another's burden came 
upon us. One day the sheriff came into the yard ; and after a 
pleasant greeting as an old friend, served an official writ on me 
for the payment of a long standing indorsement for a friend, 
amounting to upwards of four thousand dollars. Another of 
the same sort followed some time later, so that with principal 
and interest the extra sum to pay here was about $6000. It 
seemed a heavy stroke. These helps for friends had been writ- 
ten long years ago, when they were regarded as perfectly safe. 
In a similar way, my father's good nature in our early days, 
had cost his family his earthly possessions, and had cast us 
all into absolute poverty. From that adversity, of course, a 



344 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



hard lesson was learned, and early in life it was resolved not 
to t>e caught in a similar trap. But there are exceptions to all 
rules, and long safety from such trouble, and kindly feeling 
for others left me blind to the possible dangers against which 
Solomon in the Bible warns. Now the evil had come to touch 
us in the most tender place. With a heavy heart and resigned 
will, without salary, we gathered from our other slender avail- 
able resources all that was within reach, and borrowed what 
more was yet needed to get out of the law's clutches. For 
eight or ten years next following, to the surprise of the people 
who did not know the circumstances, we lived rigidly poor ; 
paying yearly interest and as much of the remaining principal 
from time to time as was possible. But it was a glad day 
therefore, when the uttermost farthing was paid and we again 
felt free. Without adequate salary and in no secular calling, 
except the limited income from the small farming interest by a 
tenant on shares, it was a slow process. 

From the Mont Alto charge which was supplied for eight 
years, the meager income of near $200 a year, did not more than 
help to pay our living expenses. Yet with all these apparent 
drawbacks, and including the years of gratuitous preaching in 
several other fields of missionary labor, we are better off today 
substantially, than some who during all these years were paid 
full salary. The Lord does not allow His servants to labor for 
naught. W T e are now moderately comfortable and have toler- 
ably well provided for a rainy day — thanks to the dear Lord ! 

The pennyless boy who began at the age of twelve years to 
earn wages at three dollars a month, afterwards by purchase 
and taking over property for indemnity, was encumbered at 
one time with upwards of seventeen hundred acres of land — 
none of which came by inheritance. More than half of what he 
owned in fee, he donated and conveyed by deed to Catawba 
College, North Carolina. This is undeveloped mineral land, 
for which the college expects to realize an endowment fund for 
a professorship in History and Constitutional Government of 
the United States and of the Reformed Church. 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



345 



The last of the farms sold was noticed thus in a local item 
of news by the Herald : 

HISTORIC FARM SOLD. 

DR. RUSSELL PARTS WITH OLD HOMESTEAD. 

Dr. Geo. B. Russell has sold his fine ioo-acre farm in the Marsh Run 
district to James E. Welty. Dr. Russell has held the title to this farm 
from the estate of the late Henry Besore, since April, 1875, that is, 
thirty-two years. The line of possession runs back with but two changes, 
through his grandfather, David Besore, to his great-grandfather, Daniel 
Besore, 160 years, or to the days of the Indians. The original large tract, of 
which this farm is the last remaining part, included the Lecrone, the 
Omwake, the two Sarbaugh's, the Geo. Carbaugh farms and the whole 
of the properties of Polktown. The large home buildings, a stone house 
and barn, were erected more than one hundred years ago — about the 
largest and best style then and now in the whole neighborhood ; and 
they are yet without break in the walls. Dr. Russell's age forbids him 
longer to manage the farm, and no male member of the large ancestral 
family is found to continue the historic line. 

He can now almost literally sing the old song : 

"No foot of land do I possess, 
While trav'ling thro' this wilderness." 

DONATION TO CATAWBA COLLEGE. 

Some of my savings years ago were loaned to several college 
friends dealing in mineral lands. In course of time they offer- 
ed to pay the loan by deeding to me 880 acres of mineral land. 
This was accepted rather than suffer loss. And that is how I 
was able to make the donation of eight hundred and eighty 
acres of rich mineral land in Somerset county, Pa., to the Ca- 
tawba College, at Newton, N. C. These lands, as yet undevel- 
oped, had been taken up by a fellow student, who had many 
years ago became a teacher, a surveyor, a lawyer, a President 
Judge. A large body of such mineral land along a projected 
railroad had been secured. But for long years the completion 
of said road had been hindered, and money was borrowed to 
hold the property. Finally to satisfy my loan a part of these 



346 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



lands was deeded to me in fee. That is how it came to me, 
held for more than twenty-five years. 

Meanwhile a lumbering company cut into my timber and 
stripped several hundred acres. A competent attorney laid 
claim for damages and secured enough from the trespass to 
re-emburse me for the loss of what was cut off. That left me 
nearly whole on the investment. Then it was offered to the 
N. C. College people. They willingly accepted and a deed in 
fee was made by me and witnessed by lawyer W. Tell Om- 
wake, to the Trustees of Catawba College. After the Wil'helm 
gobble by Lancaster, it was not to be offered to the institution 
there. And it was impossible to convey it to Pittsburgh Syn- 
od — self-adjudged. 

According to estimate it was worth then $10,000. The 
President of the college says they had an offer of $18,000 for 
the lease of the coals, leaving the iron and surface of the land 
still held by the institution. My advice was to close with the 
offer. But some parties who ought to know, tell them to hold 
on for more. They would perhaps take $25,000. My idea was 
that the proceeds of the sale funded in a few years at interest 
would be better than a contingent higher sum later. But that 
is their affair. My gift is no mean thing for a needy college, 
and should be made available capital without risking coming 
opportunity. Other donations to education, churches and 
missions, run into thousands more, devoted to the cause of 
Christ — which may He bless! 

Twenty-five years or more ago my eldest brother became 
financially embarrassed. I went to his help to the amount of 
$10,193 i n hard cash and notes. At first this seemed nice and 
easy. But when my own living income grew short and times 
with me were hard it was found impossible to realize anything 
at all even as interest from what was put in his hands. This 
stringency continued about twenty years, to the end of his 
days; and I never could find it in my heart to press a settle- 
ment by still more troubling him in forcing the property secur- 
ity to lawful sale. The interest was not paid me for over nine- 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



347 



teen years; and this could not now be added to the principal. 
His town property and the merchant mill at Russell Station 
were by mortgage deed in the hands of his brother-in-law, a 
Chambersburg attorney, but it was not foreclosed at the time 
of his death. The Adams county mountain property had been 
deeded to me, in payment for my advances, but I could not re- 
alize on it, owing to a claimed reserved twenty-five years' lease 
encumbrance. When finally a few years ago it was sold, the 
amount fell more than six thousand dollars short of what was 
due me; and for the relief of his widow, I besides set apart 
$3000 of the proceeds of the sale for her sole use ; and to keep 
peace with the greedy heirs, a compromise settlement cost me 
$2500 more in cash, besides to quiet that bogus lease. These 
things are mentioned to correct loose statements made by 
parties who do not know the facts. The above property con- 
tained four hundred and thirty acres of mountain land in 
Adams county, Pa. ; which with the eight hundred and eighty 
acres in Somerset county, Pa., made quite a landed possession 
— from all of which there is now happy relief. The farm left 
gives me more than trouble enough to have it cared for by 
the tenant farmers. When it is remembered that the poor boy 
walked along the road by this property years ago, weary 
and lonely with not a dime to his name, it is a matter for 
humble gratitude to the "giver of every good and perfect gift," 
that He has provided without strain of integrity in business a 
comfortable home for the homeless child and also, now for his 
family. His early years were clouded with the loss of our fa- 
ther's place, and he for a large part of life was tossed about 
by uncertain changes in hope only of final rest in heaven. No 
earthly home such as is now left for my family was in remotest 
expectancy. It all comes from above. 

My fields of ministerial labor actually number only seven 
for the more than fifty years since my ordination. A remark- 
able circumstance too is that in all this ministry in different 
places for me there was never an installation. At the begin- 
ning of a new mission there is of course no congregation over 



348 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



which to be installed, or settled. And after months of service, 
when the organization has once -been effected and officers elect- 
ed it seems awkward then at that late day to begin to settle 
the missionary by such a service, which if it mean anything 
ought to take place if at all at the entrance of a minister into 
a new charge. Paul and Barnabas were never installed, but 
only set apart for the general missionary work, even where 
they continued for years in the same place. So Philip was not 
the settled pastor when he, on the way, baptized the Ethiopian 
eunuch, nor was that new convert attacher or "joined" to any 
local church. In some such sense my ministry has fallen out. 
I once baptized a child, the little daughter of a Quakeress, who 
in a strange part of the country, out of my charge, in very 
earnest faith desired the baptismal sign and seal of grace in 
behalf of her offspring — though for reasons strong enough as 
was supposed to herself, she thought it best, that she should 
remain in "the covenant of the Friends." Some brethren to 
whom this fact was mentioned think the act irregular and not 
lawful under our church rules ; but if there is any grace for the 
baptized child, pledged on the unquestioned faith of the mother, 
what was I, to withhold its administration ? 

Well, about calls and overtures. The next received after 
having been settled in Pittsburgh, already on faith without 
sight accepted, . was one only the next year after settling in 
my first mission, from Dayton, Ohio, in May 1855. This came 
to me -while at the Ohio Synod's meeting at Xenia. A com- 
mittee brought me the call and for special reasons, urged its 
acceptance. I had less than a year and a half before, started 
in at an important mission point. It seemed to me therefore 
both foolish and trivial to drop a useful work only just begun, 
in order to take up what they urged was a better and more im- 
portant and promising one. Rev. G. W. Williard was then 
lodging with me where we were both entertained together at 
Elder A. H. Baughman's hospitable home. When the object 
of the Dayton committee's visit was mentioned to my fellow 
lodger, he at once vehemently declared that I "deserved richly 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



349 



a whipping for entertaining a thought of leaving my promising 
mission." Telling him to hold off mercifully with his threats, 
for such had not at all been my thought or intention, but that 
to get rid of the application, the committee would be turned 
over to him. He, it seemed, gladly took to that proposition. 
In some weeks thereafter, he seemed to have changed entirely 
his notion about the sinful impropriety of my leaving Pitts- 
burgh and its mission; for, in an urgent letter, he begged me 
to come and take his place at Columbus, Ohio, so that he might 
go to Dayton. Oh, no; he was answered, it might cost a de- 
served whipping to leave Pittsburgh unless it were not as great 
a sin to remove in favor of Columbus to gratify the editor of 
the Western Missionary as to go to Dayton on a call which 
unsolicited came to me and which was turned over to him. It 
was found quite possible for him to leave, nevertheless, his 
mission at Columbus ; and to Dayton he went. 

The next place, besides the overture to Dayton, and out of 
it indirectly another to Columbus, was a formal call to Tiffin, 
Ohio. This was backed up by a long argument in a letter from 
Rev. Dr. Moses Kieffer, pressing me to a favorable answer, 
and holding out offers of coming honors besides, from the col- 
lege there, of which he was then the acting president, along 
with his professorship in the Semniary. It was to some degree 
a temptation to a young man, who might now possibly leave a 
tolerably well established three-year-old mission. Inasmuch 
as no family ties then held him, it wold have been comparative- 
ly easy to break up the then existing relations and leave for a 
new place. But there was grace enough to decline the flatter- 
ing call. 

Westmoreland College, of which mention elsewhere has been 
already made, was to be put in operation, not long after the 
Tiffin matter was declined. The presidency of the new institu- 
tion was formally offered me by an actual election. But just 
then there were some considerations that still kept me at Grace 
church. Less than a year, however, after the overture was de- 
clined the presidency so strongly urged, would have been a 



35o 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



very easy thing in fact perhaps a relief to have taken the place, 
so lately pushed from my own shoulders. The turn of the 
kaleidescope changes the combination of the figures. 

Elder John Wiest then, after we had begun the work on the 
Allegheny side of the river, wanted me to give a favorable con- 
sideration to an overture from John Wanamaker to take charge 
of his then infant Bethany project in Philadelphia, with the 
promise that the church should be made Reformed ; as his mo- 
ther, sister and brother were members formerly at Chambers- 
burg and later in that city. It did not suit me to go down on 
the particular Sunday indicated ; and the Rev. Dr. Lowrey was 
invited to come instead. He took charge and Bethany was 
made a Presbyterian church. 

Hagerstown, Md., was the next call formally made me. A 
committee consisting of Dr. Berry, E. M. Recher and a third 
gentleman whose name is not now recalled, came to me at 
Waynesboro while visiting my mother for a few weeks of my 
vacation, and brought me a pressing call from the Hagerstown 
charge. Mr. Recher had been one of my former students, and 
would not take no for an answer. Rev. Dr. Harbaugh and 
Judge Syester, a college classmate, also added their urgency 
to the call. It was a prominent and historical charge, and in 
the bounds of which my paternal grandfather lay buried, and 
some other preponderating influences favored the acceptance ; 
yet it was reluctantly declined. Often since then, the decision 
would have been otherwise. The present pastor, then a young 
man, who had been one of my successors at the head of the 
Middletown school, was next recommended by Dr. Harbaugh, 
and he accepted. 

Another election came to me as the first pastor of the Trin- 
ity congregation now at Seventh and Oxford streets, Phila- 
delphia. Drs. Maybury and Gloninger, Elder Graver and 
Rev. Dr. S. R. Fisher pressed that call upon me ; and a good 
salary was provided by our rich members in that city. It had 
its drawings too, and for some reasons the inclinations were in 
its favor, especially as they wanted me settled near the Mes- 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



351 



senger office. It is hard to say just now satisfactorily why 
that call was not promptly accepted. Had it been doubtless my 
history and the shaping of the new congregation, out of which 
so much wealth has come for Ursinus College, might have been 
different. If mistake was made, the good Lord pardon it. It 
is one of the regretable things in Protestantism that these de- 
cisions are left so much to the personal influences at work in 
any case. Informal offers through Dr. S. R. Fisher, next came 
from Emmittsburg, Md., and another from Somerset, Pa., and 
overtures from various other places, though the matter was not 
put in the form of direct calls. In those times it seemed calls 
and overtures were flush. Later in the years, when nothing 
was in hand, some of these would have been very acceptable 
indeed. But the dead line, though nearing, had not yet then 
been crossed. 

The superintendent of missions offered me the appointment 
to the newly proposed church enterprise at Kittanning, Pa., 
and strongly urged me to accept. Having some years before 
preached the first Reformed minister's sermon in that place, it 
may have been a pointer in the line of duty. But an opening 
was provided for Rev. D. S. Dieffenbacher, my former elder 
in Grace church, who had been urged by me to enter the minis- 
terial office in which his father had served till death ; and so he 
was recommended by me in my stead at the time he was li- 
censed. 

Similar was my course in reference to Martinsburg, W. Va., 
before the present pastor was called to that charge, through 
my suggestion to Dr. Fisher, who had asked me to entertain 
the overture made to me. At that time very little of its condi- 
tion or of subsequent promise was known to me, and small 
sympathy ran that way. Some time after this, came Elder 
Richard Gray's offer of the Winchester charge. Since becom- 
ing better acquainted with the church and people there, it 
sometimes seems to me as though it were well had that plead- 
ing request been answered in the affirmative. Only the Lord 
can see the end from the beginning. We are short-sighted. 



352 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



The Delaware people, in a formal call, also sent through the 
personal persuasive letters of my warm friend Elder J. G. 
Brown, in 1881, made it hard for me to give them a negative 
answer. In the light of what has since happened them the 
matter is much to be regretted. 

While in Boston collecting for the new church in Pittsburgh, 
Deacon Moses Grant became interested in our mission work. 
He not only gave me recommendations to some benevolent 
men of that city, who responded in subscriptions running well 
up towards two hundred dollars for Grace mission, but gave a 
flattering personal offer besides. After several full exchanges 
of discussion on our church's theology and history, he became 
so alive to our position, that he offered to buy "The Tremont 
Chapel," between the Boston Commons and the State House 
for $15,000 and present it to the Reformed church; provided 
I would come at once and take charge of the new interest, 
bringing our positive gospel to theologically hungry New 
Englanders. He felt convinced that Puritanism had about 
run to seed ; and the negative crop was Unitarianism, Univer- 
salism, Spiritualism and bald Infidelity. Real positive reli- 
gion resting on the old faith, he thought would help to save it. 
He would venture that much of his large Christian benevo- 
lence in the effort to do so for his people in Congregationalism. 
Had it been Dr. Harbaugh or Dr. Higbee, the offer might have 
been taken. It was urged in turn by me upon both of these 
men, at that time to accept the noble and well meant gift. But 
their hands were also tied as well as were mine at the same 
time; so nothing further came of it. The Presbyterians and 
Episcopalians have been reaping in that harvest field since 
1857, and have grown strong. Had our system of positive 
faith and real Christological religion been planted in Boston 
then, it might have conquered New England for us. Instead, 
the Roman Catholics, then few, are coming to be in the ma- 
jority in some parts of the home of the early Puritans. 

Harrisburg, some time after the Boston offer, came next in 
a tentative overture on conditions, through the Kelkers. One 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



353 



of the brothers asked me to "write out in-extenso miy ideas on 
practical religion and politics," especially politics. Although 
not in sympathy, it seemed rather uncalled for to undertake 
thus to catechise and examine me with a view of becoming the 
pastor there. The other calls accepted and under which service 
was given, have been referred to before. Mention especially 
may also be made additionally of Dr. Schaff's offers to have 
me join in his overburdening work in New York, at what was 
regarded in our church a high salary, a combine of $4000. This 
offer was something of the same kind that came with the over- 
ture from Kansas City, where the elder said three per cent, a 
month might be realized on investments, to accept the good op- 
portunity. Money was not however the keynote in any call 
to me. After that fact became somewhat known, some nig- 
gardly offers were made to me, here and there, to act as agent 
or secretary, or on committees to raise funds for interests 
which could well afford to pay for such work, and did in fact 
afterwards pay others. 

Of the several calls accepted, some became sources of regret 
and sorrow, whose effects are felt to this day. One was the 
position of editor tendered by the Eastern Synod, placing me 
in what became an irksome relation to the Publication office, 
another was the appointment as first missionary to Washing- 
ton city, D. C. And the third, equally as bad, was the election 
and acceptance to the presidency of Palatinate College. Each 
and all of these drew me away from my original and historical 
relations to the church work in Western Pennsylvania; where 
my life's service ought to have been continued uninterruptedly, 
with prospect of greater usefulness and success. Surely, it 
seems more ground would have been made and doubtless more 
fruit gathered from continuous service there, to which full 
training had been previously given. But my hour-glass is 
running out, and no second time do we "pass this way" in our 
weary pilgrimage. One lesson was indeed well learned and 
burned into bitter experience : Avoid "Boards" ! Boards, in- 
deed! These may have their uses, for some purposes and 



354 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



some men. Some men and their work, and some church en- 
terprises may doubtless be the better for them ; but others too 
may have many reasons to shun them and regret them as so 
many necessary buzzing and irritating pests. Boards perhaps 
are now better, and they may have learned much. 

The overture looking to my proposed election to the presi- 
dency of Heidelberg college, carried with it all that was neces- 
sary — except the formal vote of the Board of Trustees, which 
was certain and sure as indicated, had only consent thereto 
been given in advance. Of this, the principal men then inter- 
ested again assured me recently at Tiffin. But as stated in my 
letter of declination, another man had been for years under the 
full conviction that he then was the only proper man for the 
place. In some considerable sense that was logically true. Any 
other man who should be placed there, except himself, would 
soon find as several did to their sorrow, that chair too warm a 
seat. Besides, he was more in sympathy, than myself, with 
the reigning spirit then more than now of the New Measure 
caste in the Ohio Synod ; and therefore it was felt by me, that 
he was better suited for the place. It was my honest opinion 
apart from personal considerations of ease and comfort, that 
everything pointed to him as the right man. 

In so far as his election and administration has been for the 
prosperity of Heidelberg, it is gratifying to me. But in find- 
ing his true level, he was afterwards by the force of circum- 
stances shoaled out of office and made to feel the sand and 
gravel gritting hard on his fretted feelings and ambition. This 
law of compensation in history is as sure as shooting, or sun- 
shine. 

Some of the principal members of the Board of Trustees 
had written to me in September, 1865, "We are now looking 
around for a new president of the college, and your name has 
been mentioned. We have settled down upon you as being 
not only a suitable person to take charge of our college at 
Tiffin, but as being the most suitable person that we have in 
the church east or west." "We can secure your election if there 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



355 



is any prospects of having your services. . . . For the sake 
of our church in the west, give us a favorable response." I 
declined beforehand. 

Rev. Dr. J. C. Bucher and Rev. Dr. C. Z. Weiser, both pro- 
posed to me similarly in personal overtures to gain my con- 
sent near a score of years later, to stand for an election to the 
same office at Lancaster. That project was not encouraged. 

An actual election to the presidency of Westmoreland Col- 
lege came to me, when that institution was bought and reor- 
ganized. The office was declined by me in favor of Dr. F. K. 
Levan. 

The projected Pittsburgh, or Wilhelm's College, was also 
formally put in my hands as acting president ; and the institu- 
tion could have been made a success, had not underhand work, 
by men more friendly towards the east, brought on premature 
disaster. 

And so also came the Palatinate College presidency, which 
was accepted in 1881 and for several years served with much 
promise of success, till it was gladly resigned. 

In the discharge of all hard and useful duties there is likely 
to be suffering going before glory; as is exemplified in the 
case of Joseph in Egypt. Yet there are some places into which 
some men force themselves, without obtaining glory. Out 
from these self-made appointments they will in due time think 
it more comfortable to escape. My rule has been never to fish 
for a charge, and never to scheme for a place. As the church 
must give you the outward call to official work, and the au- 
thorities directing the local duties must choose you, it is worse 
than folly to take all that into one's own hands. Until in this 
sense some man has hired me, there may be reason enough 
when the Master asks about standing in idleness, to tell Him 
that we have not been officially engaged. Run not before be- 
ing called, lest the question comes, What hast thou to do, to 
engage thus in the Lord's work? If He has something for His 
servants to do, the voice will surely come; though Paul was 
kept in prison two whole years, and Luther was similarly con- 



356 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



fined and cut off for an equal time from outside work, yet that 
was the Lord's way to the end. This must bring some con- 
solation for the waiting ones, unemployed. Since my relief 
from asthma and with easier finances, it has been an ardent 
desire to be again more directly in the harness ; but for years 
no pastoral charge or mission called me. 

Some eight or more years ago, the classis and some of the 
mission board were notified that my health would justify me 
in serving a charge and my private means be the support. 
While no place in commission of the Board could be taken on 
the pay of the treasury, yet my own resources with self-denial 
would satisfy my family and thus be a saving to the church in 
men and money. This conditional offer of service was re- 
peated and made more than once. Inquiry direct of a board 
officer as to why nothing came of it, he replied that it was be- 
cause he did not take me as in earnest nor think my offer really 
meant that the service would be wholly gratis ! 

To help in the solution, several places known to be open for 
occupancy were mentioned, as Charlotte, N. C, or a second 
effort in Washington, D. C, or a mission Sunday-school even 
in our own town. Yet none of the possibilities were tried, 
and no opening at my own charges was offered. If that means 
that the Lord has no such call for me, and "no man hath hired 
me," by those who sit in authority — then the result must be 
accepted. It would have been in some sort a comfort to me, 
if another fair trial had come for work in Washington, where 
success would have become the best answer to the mistake of 
laying me off, in those years of unfair treatment long ago by 
the executive committee of the Board. Perhaps humiliation 
needs to be made more complete. At all events, it cannot run 
much longer till the end will reveal what there is hidden in 
the as yet unreached solution. He that believeth in Him shall 
not make haste, and the best interpreter will make the riddle 
plain. They also serve who only stand and wait. 

Speaking of the "pious Germans," who brought on the rebel- 
lion against Dr. Schaff's "Romanizing teachings" in the Sem- 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



357 



inary, take the following instance as a specimen of those men. 
Four of them at the end of the winter term, started for a good 
time on a vacation "Reise," like the students in Germany used 
formerly to do, and something like tramps do now, without 
any funds to pay their way. The first day brought them early 
in the afternoon to Waynesboro where they soon reached a 
good elder's store. As he was one of the Synod's Board of 
Visitors to the seminary, and known by name to them, so these 
theological students set. themselves down there and piously pat- 
ronized him with all sorts of learned religious talk, till night 
drew on. Although he had a large house, it was not just the 
thing according to his notion to take all the squatters in for 
lodging. When he finally suggested the neighboring hotel, 
they were well pleased, but notified him plainly that they could 
not pay for the entertainment. To make the best of it, how- 
ever, he politely agred to do them that kind service, and took 
them over, having engaged rooms and supper. Being hungry 
they did full justice to the occasion and ate most heartily. Then 
they proceeded to order up all sorts of extra conveniences and 
hotel comforts to their room; where they held high revelry 
amid thick fumes of old tobacco pipe smoke, in real orthodox 
theological discussions, till after midnight. The next day 
when morning drew well on towards noon, they left without 
making any sign of thanks to their generous entertainer. The 
hotel man reported that since he had kept that house he never 
had to clean up after a filthier set of men than these who 
seemed to have done their worst to soil up the beds and rooms ; 
a lasting memory of those same pious German theological 
students ! They are all dead now, and have ceased to buy to- 
bacco to burn, and to impose for necessities on good will. 

I wrote a history of that "German Rebellion in the Semin- 
ary," for a society of Inquiry's assignment. It was put in the 
archives in care of the Charta-Philex ; and if it has not been 
lost or destroyed in the removal, it ought to have still some of 
the primitive fact relating to that unrighteous treatment of 
Dr. Schaff. Had he resigned and left the church too at that 



358 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



time, he could not have had much blame laid to his charge. 
That course at least was demanded by self-respect. The worst 
of the disorderly set went to Tiffin, and were welcomed and 
received with open arms, as champions of the true faith. The 
rival seminary regularly received them and afterwards by party 
feeling they entered into the holy ministry. Their tracks can 
be traced in the history of those times, showing the evil effects 
of too pious partisan prejudice. 

Dr. Schafif himself was cured of some of his first crude no- 
tions. In the earlier part of his years here, he thought Amer- 
ica should be Germanized to some extent, literally in language 
as well as in spirit. One great thing however he did find it 
possible to do: that was to awaken an interest on this side of 
the water in German literature, philosophy and theology in 
New England as well as in our church. English born students 
were soon led in the direction of German thought and more 
thorough investigation of truth. To this end we attended his 
lectures delivered in the German language; and joined the 
German Rauch literary society, "Geselschaft," getting so far 
as "reading, declamation, debate," and finally reaching its pres- 
idency and also conducting the exercises in that tongue, not 
one word of which was at one time thought possible to me, 
and not enough is known now. While we tried to cultivate the 
rich German, we could not so well fall in love, as Keafauver 
said, with the coarse specimens themselves. Perhaps we did 
not always meet the best class of that wonderful people. One 
of those, who became a minister and Doctor of Divinity, I 
once heard stoutly assert and hold by stiff discussion, that 
Adam and Eve spoke German in Paradise ; and he then set up 
an argument to prove that this, because of its fitness, was the 
original language of the whole earth. Such ignorance and pre- 
judice and much such like nonsense bring upon German people 
the common American reproach of being "dumb Dutch. " 

My address, delivered forty odd years ago, before the liter- 
ary societies of Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio, had for 
its subject "The Influence of the German Element in America. " 



MEANS OF LIVING. 



359 



That, you may notice, was long before there was as much of 
its odd millions and power and fashion known among scholars 
as now. There were then considerably fewer German schol- 
ars and students, and books, and some false as well as good 
theological teachings, in the original and in translations, than 
at the present day. A professor or preacher nowadays cannot 
set himself up for much in this country, unless he has been to 
Germany and has also brought back with him some of its good 
and, it may be, bad peculiarities. But that address then made, 
on what many thought was new ground, was in the correct line 
of historical thought coming into view before it was fashion- 
able and popular. And it has doubtless produced some good 
fruit in calling attention to the rich stores of thought, collected 
by the honeybees of the fatherland, which have since been more 
fully opened to the earnest men of America. Recently, after so 
many years, the Rev. Dr. M. Scheelig, shortly before his death, 
wrote to me, asking if I had anything more in that department 
of literature, in which he had now also come to have large 
interest. 

The foreign-born German Americans are now not as deeply 
set against the change of their language to our national Eng- 
lish, as were those of the first half of the previous century. The 
conservatism that so tenaciously held to the old tongue was 
perhaps stronger in our Reformed people especially in those 
who had settled in east Pennsylvania before days of free 
schools, than is found in the cities of the west and among 
those of later immigration. It was a serious loss to themselves 
and their immediate descendants to oppose the English in the 
churches ; but still more, a great damage to the Reformed 
church. One of my most earnest efforts in all my public min- 
isterial life has been to reconcile as far as possible the Germans 
to the inevitable necessity of providing their English growing 
children with church homes in our own church, by fostering 
close relations of fraternal confidence between the German 
and English congregations of our own denomination. It is a 
satisfaction to know that this has won, the confidence of some 



360 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



of the leading German ministers who know that it is not in 
order to take advantage of them, and deplete their churches ; 
but to save the young people to our beloved Reformed church. 
One of them in a late General Synod, soliciting my aid for one 
of their plans said: "we regard you, Dr. Russell, as a fair 
man; and you go straight, where we also can come." 



XXVI. 



Ecclesiastical Meetings 

' B S HE Westmoreland Classis was my official home immedi- 
ately after entrance upon the work of the ministry. 
Having been examined and licensed by the Eastern Synod at 
sessions in Philadelphia, October, 1853, I was then placed un- 
der the care of the Lancaster Classis, which ordained me on a 
call to a new mission, February 13, 1854, and dismissed me to 
the Westmoreland Classis in whose bounds then was the pro- 
posed first English-German Reformed church of Pittsburgh. 
Eleven annual meetings of that classis marked my regular at- 
tendance as stated clerk or president, besides special meetings 
of which no register was kept ; having held all the offices and 
shaping much work. Then a dismission to the St. Paul's Clas- 
sis came, in which then lay my work, and of which I was a 
member at six annual meetings, and also once president. My 
next classis was the Philadelphia, for three years. Returning 
thence to Pittsburgh, where a new classis had meanwhile been 
formed out of part of the Westmoreland and St. Paul's, called 
the Allegheny Classis, becoming a member and was also once 
president, .having attended its annual meetings for six years. 
Thence, they dismissed me to the Maryland Classis, where 
membership was held for two years ; was present previously at 
three other annual meetings of the same body, before my or- 
dination. I remember having been present also at two meetings 
of the Clarion Classis, while living at Pittsburgh. And only 
once was member of the old Lebanon Classis, while President 
of Palatinate College at Myerstown. The Mercersburg Clas- 
sis was my next home, and for a longer time, of which also in 
course I became president. Twenty-four annual, besides a 
number of special meetings are already counted in the last list, 
besides several absences. Thus making a total of some fifty 



362 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



odd classical meetings, in most of which it was my duty to 
take working part. 

At synodical meetings the attendance was also quite varied. 
The Ohio Synod, 1854, was the first to which my membership 
belonged. It met then in "convention" ; and for nine annual 
sessions I was in attendance ; during which a wide range of 
experience in its business fell to my lot, working on many spe- 
cial committees and once, at Dayton, as president of that body. 
At one of the Synod's meetings, it was made my commission 
to act as corresponding delegate from the west to east, after- 
wards from the Eastern Synod to the Western, bearing its fra- 
ternal greetings to the west. 

The Eastern Synod claims to be the "mother of us all." Be- 
sides having ordained me, it also sent me as just stated to 
greet the brethren of the west. In one of its annual meetings, 
at Lewisburg, while Dr. Fisher was acting president they ap- 
pointed me to act temporarily for that year in his office of 
stated clerk ; also sent me as delegate to the Dutch Reformed 
General Synod after our three hundredth anniversary. At 
fifteen of its annual meetings it was my privilege to be in at- 
tendenc. During some of these meetings much of our most 
interesting history was made and we there met the master 
minds of the church. 

Thereafter, came six annual meetings of the Pittsburgh 
Synod, as a member and holding office and bearing- some of its 
early burdens. From enjoying its highest favor, they brought 
me also through suffering and sorrow, to subsequent glory. 
Tribulations are not pleasant but grievous, though afterwards 
come the peaceable fruits like a welcome relief from toothache. 
It was during this period that the bitter trouble and injustice 
arose in the transfer of "The Reformed Era" to the eastern 
Publication Board. Few can know what that tribulation was 
to me. 

With my transfer to Washington, D. C, and subsequent re- 
moval to Waynesboro, my synodical relations were changed 
again,, this time to the Synod of the Potomac* where for long 



ECCLESIASTICAL MEETINGS. 



363 



years I had strong enmities to encounter and overcome. My 
duties as delegate from the classis to this body have not come 
as regularly nor as frequently as in years gone by to the other 
Synods. Only ten times has it been my call to meet with this 
Synod. Nor is there felt the same personal interest in its pro- 
ceedings. The spirit in these meetings is changing. The old 
warriors are passing away, and the young men have something 
to learn ; but occasionally the chariots of Israel and the horse- 
men thereof have ascended also from these realms. 

Of the General Synod attendance mention is made with a 
good degree of pleasure. From the Triennial Convention at 
Winchester, Va., came as an outgrowth of its action, the first 
meeting of the General Synod at Pittsburgh, November, 1863. 
It was my privilege to take large part of the western commit- 
tee from the Ohio Synod in the preliminary work of the forma- 
tion of the General Synod; and have been present at all the 
meetings from the beginning till now except three : Akron, the 
first at Baltimore, and the first one held at Tiffin, and though a 
delegate to Allentown, was unable to attend. Vice-president, 
coresponding secretary, twice chairman of the committee on 
the state of the church, once on a committee to amend the con- 
stitution, and other appointements on special business, made a 
full proportion of work where there were giants in this high 
court. All my relations with the General Synod have been 
most pleasant, and it is to be hoped profitable ; though the for- 
mer stated clerk inadvertently entirely omitted my name as a 
regular delegate from the minutes of a whole regular triennial 
meeting. And other records put my name on the wrong side 
of several aye and nay votes; and credited one of my regular 
reports to another member of a committee. These instances 
are mentioned to show how fallible are human records of what 
is usually taken as true official history. 

The Alliance of Reformed churches holding the Presbyterial 
system held its meeting in Washington, D. C., in the fall of 
1899. At this, is was my privilege to represent, along with 
other delegates, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in 



R-25 



364 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



the United States. It was my first and only election to attend 
that venerable body, made up of delegates from all lands in 
the world, where there are Reformed or Presbyterian churches. 
The button badge of its membership given its members, is 
among the keepsakes of the grand occsion. "Lamps many 
light one." 

This record may also make mention of dedication sermons 
at more than a dozen churches and cornerstone layings; also 
the dedication address of the new Diagnothian Hall, Lancas- 
ter, and the one at the formal opening of the St. Paul Orphans' 
Home, Butler, as well as that of the Bethany Orphans' Home, 
Womelsdorf ; besides one before the literary societies of Heid- 
elberg, at Tiffin, and the one at the Female College, Greens- 
burg, one at the Westmoreland College, Mt. Pleasant, and one 
at Palatinate College, 1870, and afterwards, 1883, the Inaugu- 
ral when made president of the same. Later, 1900, the literary 
address at Catawba College, N. C, and the same year at Mas- 
sanuttan, Woodstock, Va. The Alumni address at Lancaster, 
1882, and an annual at Pen-Mar Reunion, and at the National 
Y. M. C. Association when a delegate at Cincinnati, Ohio, and 
at the semi-centennial at Mercersburg, 1885, containing a bold 
prophecy, since then come true. Yet this has not made me a 
popular platform speaker. Off-hand in the rough is perhaps 
my fort, before a miscellaneous audience especially in form of 
debate. A man is as much a creature of circumstances and sur- 
roundings, as an original agent or factor. 

It has been my good fortune to have met many excellent 
men and women, of whom it is an honor to be recognized as an 
acquaintance and fellow laborer in the work of the age. Noble 
souls, holding rank in the Lord's service, give spur and inspi- 
ration to even a modest one needing help and sympathy. But 
the other sort are also to be met in much larger number. Per- 
haps most of the many men of many minds are to be found 
with one's antagonists. But my early sturdy stoic training 
from boyhood made it possible to meet this class of people and 
hold my own with them. Some were magnificent fighters, cor- 



ECCLESIASTICAL MEETINGS. 



365 



dial haters, and endowed with great capacity for jealousy, 
gnawing envy, and superb selfishness. As ministers, according 
to St. Paul, are men of like passions with their fellows, it is 
not very surprising to find some of them yet under partially 
unsubdued and uncrucified nature. David had still some of the 
bitter grit in him, as can be traced in some of his utterances 
against his enemies, who were more numerous than the hairs 
of his head — and he was not bald-headed either. And some of 
the brethren in our day certainly are true descendants of Adam, 
who begat Cain that quarreled with Abel. These have repeat- 
edly rough-shod crossed my path. Occasionally there is found 
a sort of ministerial assassin, whose weapon strikes you in 
the back, related to an ancient lot, for backbiters were known 
in the early church. I have never been converted to non-resist- 
ance pure and simple against such devilish work. 

About in proportion as these antagonists are pious, or sup- 
pose themselves to be so, the more troublesome they are to 
resist. When they tackle one they are like Saul in his zeal 
starting on the journey towards Damascus; and if not re- 
strained by a power from on high, they become fearfully and 
wonderfully "mad" in their furious persecutions. God has 
given me grace however at times to meet such shocks with suf- 
fering fortitude but firm challenge and even fight as did Paul 
with Barnabas, or when withstanding Peter to the face; and 
possibly my combative nature here and there was unduly active 
on the side of the flesh. While our Christ love may hate sin, 
and "resist the devil," there is danger however that the carnal 
may take a little too much credit to itself. If we only negative- 
ly with good do resist evil to overcome it, the result is satisfac- 
tory. As far as known therefore, let me say my contests have 
not been waged from mere carnal enmity, but from a sense of 
personal duty in behalf of Christian self-respect and regenerate 
manhood. We may cherish however no hate to any who have 
been persecutors, or to the mistaken leaders of wrongs done, 
or sought to be done to me or my family. The Lord pardon 



366 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



whatever has been amiss, in thought, or word, or deed! As 
much as in us lieth, we must withal be peacemakers. 

What makes me think my work and writings have not fallen 
still born, is the manner of approval they have met with gen- 
erally from a number of our most prominent ministers and lay- 
men. Spontaneously and entirely free from solicitations many 
letters came to me at different times referring to a wide scope 
of subjects treated. It was satisfactory as well as flattering to 
have warm words of sympathy and encouraging approbation 
come from Drs. Nevin, Schaff, T. G. Apple, F. W. Kremer, 
A. H. Kremer, Ellis N. Kremer, Bowman, Zacharias, Har- 
baugh, Whitmer, Keafauver, Swander, Kerr, Noll, P. C. 
Prugh, Wingert, Gross, Kunkle, Santee, Hacke, Leonard, 
Levan, Brown, Gray, Gerhart, Miller, Hoy and many others 
not now called up by memory, who were kind enough to ad- 
dress me with their hearty favor and extend approbation for 
something said or written, done independently during those 
years of living history. If the divine favor were as decided, 
there is hope for reward. 

It is in no small degree gratifying that from the most ob- 
scure and unpromising beginnings, handicapped with poverty 
and without social or family influences or fortuitous conditions 
the average man may rank primus inter pares, in the historical 
settings of the ages. Not for pride is mention made therefore 
of such things. Life from this end view is something more 
than that, and when report is made of what enters into particu- 
lar history, there is occasion to fill in such facts. Testimony 
from third parties is not self praise. It is not profitable to put 
on record the bitter opposition evoked. If there were some 
lively contest and hard knocks, the vigor was not all on one 
side. 

The Confessional as established, held and enforced in the 
Romish system is no part of my religious practice or faith. 
The priest, as such, has no business with my personal lapses in 
sin. With a thin partition between him and penitent sinners, 
he cannot control or efface transgressions. Nor does that order 



ECCLESIASTICAL MEETINGS. 



367 



prevent like occurrences of evil in the lives of his people. Ac- 
cording to that system, the priest must also confess his sins to 
another priest or bishop, and the bishop so on up to some one 
else. My private shortcomings and personal offences against 
the love and law of God, need not be revealed to any other 
man ; for when you confess and lay all bare to the priest, that 
does not wipe the stain from the soul. Jesus is priest enough 
for me. Hence, what is sinful and unholy in my long life, 
though great and innumerable, need not be put on record in 
these pages. Only the blood flowing from the cross washes 
away the stains. It is not priestly confession, but Christly ab- 
solution that cleanses the record from its past blots. If that be 
mine, no human ear or eye need know my secret faults. Be- 
cause not enumerated here, it is not therefore to be claimed 
that there has been nothing to regret and no repentance for 
many wrong doings and neglected duties. Our merciful High 
Priest knows all and makes the atonement, without requiring 
a detailed rehearsal to be given. And I do not like to say that 
"by the authority given to me," an absolution is given to the 
people. 

It is not at all likely that the miscellaneous writings under 
different names and no names, appearing in the papers and 
periodicals through a long course of years, will even in part 
ever be collected into volumes and published. But for refer- 
ence by any historian gathering up the constituent elements 
entering into controversies and discussions of the times, they 
may be of more value than now appears, so reference is made 
to the current literature of those years. 

It is running well into fifty-four years since my ordination 
to the office of the gospel ministry. Of these, a number must 
be deducted for intervals not in active duty, amounting in fact 
to some years. There should however also be account made of 
such periods as carried extra work ; for instance, when teach- 
ing and preaching regularly in a charge, or when in a pastorate 
and at the same time publishing and editing — as also contribut- 
ing at irregular intervals to the periodicals and making books 



368 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



for the people. The times thus employed in estimated extra 
work, fully make up for the off years spent as vacation times 
so that recuperation was provided for new service. Hence all 
the years of my ministerial life may be averaged together as 
officially employed. 

Nothing was needed to be counted off on account of sickness 
or inability from decrepitude of age. For me, it always seem- 
ed easier to work than to suffer, as many invalids have testified. 
My thankfulness for this, is far less than the mercies of our 
Lord require. A life of long years devoted to the heavenly 
calling may possibly bring forth fruit more than appears on the 
surface ; because the power of divine grace works in the hid- 
den mysteries through feeblest outward means. While humbly 
lamenting the apparent barrenness of my best efforts, it will be 
a matter of joyous surprise if the glory of the Lord appears in 
the final day to have been in any way promoted in my help to 
His cause. My hearty prayer is that the seed sown may all 
germinate and bring forth fruit for eternity's harvest, when 
we shall join in shouting the "harvest home." It is not a vain 
stretch of faith to look for such gracious fulfilment of the Mas- 
ter's promise. Do we serve these years for personal considera- 
tions of any sort, or for the highest purpose of doing good in 
the name of Jesus? 



XXVII. 



Homeward at Fourscore and Four 

LDNESS is not my complaint. If the infirmity of age 
ever does come to me, it will be in light afflictions, "few- 
er than our sins and less than our guilt." Entering on fourscore 
and four draws one toward the natural end, bearing the cross in 
the homeward way. The swan song must soon come now, or 
forever remain unsung. Days and years gliding silently into the 
ever closing wake of time admonishes one of the measured and 
full age approaching the "House Appointed for all living." 
As you watch the sun descending to the western hills, it sinks 
rapidly towards the horizon, seeming to move with accelerat- 
ing speed to its setting. Its pace, the while, though steady and 
regular as at high noon, does not close the day with a rush. It 
rolls no more rapidly now than at midday in the heavens. But 
it does not seem the same towards its going down in robes of 
golden glow, changing anon to duller tints fading rapidly. Our 
faith then waits for another dawn. Thus peaceful at our ter- 
minal comes the change of life, folded in gracious promise for 
a new morning of eternal day. 

Exceptional strength lasting above the fourscore years is 
for the more part, as the Scriptures tell, but labor and sorrow, 
for it is soon cut off and we fly away. But a shock of corn 
gathered in its season tells in its emblem truth of happy old 
age, full of ripened blessings. As it is not a sad thing for the 
sun at its appointed hour to set, because it shall rise again, so 
in a similar sense it is not an untimely ending for a full aged 
Christian to die. He shall indeed rise again in the resurrection 
morning. The Sun of Righteousness shall bring in the eternal 
day, and give to age new bloom of lasting youth. 

Having reached the limit of the inevitable, we seem to draw 
near the unseen ocean's shore in the flowing river of time, and 



37° 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



the resounding roar of the tide as we approach is heard nearer 
and clearer. The voyage to the unknown realm beyond to 
which we are hastening, must soon begin. As you near eter- 
nity from the sand hills of this life, you may in advance hear 
the indistinct murmurs of the breakers sounding louder and 
stronger till more certainly the deep tones fall on the expectant 
soul. In this experience there is no call for undue alarm. It 
is a mistake of wrongful habit to clothe age with dread fore- 
boding. Better familiarize one's self with the Christian com- 
forts brought to faith — sure in the last hours, of spreading a 
halo around the death bed of the pilgrim. Let my last end be 
the Christian's triumph in the peace of Jesus ! 

To pass one's eighty-fourth birthday gives a somewhat near- 
er view of the heavenward side of earthly existence. It is 
now not terrible at all to me. My mother who was nearing her 
home in her ninety-first year, in cheerful answer to a remark 
made for her peace and comfort, said : "Oh, George, I am not 
at all afraid to die." This helped to comfort me, and possibly 
one reason for my own diminishing fear of the dread messen- 
ger has been the fruitful example of her strong faith. Many 
times and through trying years there was to me something ex- 
ceedingly unwelcome in the possible nearness to death. It was 
hard, for instance, to see and realize how the blessed martyrs 
could without dread look upon their immediate approaching 
dissolution. Of course it was by faith, strong at their trying 
and dying hour. But the personal question was, how would 
it be with me ? A shrinking fear often became master, as when 
the small pox came into our house and took my brother. And 
a sudden call of some near accident as on a railroad smash-up, 
would at times have been terrifying and alarming. God be 
praised, that in Christ Jesus there is full victory over that fear 
— not only for the martyrs, but for our friends and for me also. 
The Lord makes it stronger ! 

There are what are called infirmities of age common to octo- 
genarians, which generally make life a burden to themselves 
and to others. From these, my lot has been remarkably free. 



HOMEWARD AT FOURSCORE AND FOUR. 371 

Except an attack of grippe years since and formerly a long 
tussle with asthma, of which a partial cure was happily effected 
in the last decade of the century just closed, there is nothing 
of such like to note. But even with all their ordinary ills, 
many old people are not only willing but perhaps solicitous to 
continue under their weight of years and sorrows for an in- 
definite time, instinctively almost as keen and strong as in 
youth. As to the definite termination of the "days of the 
years," the most ancient of the fathers remembered, give the 
standard by which to calculate. The high eighties or even 
nineties which they are disposed to have set are hopefully for 
their allotment. 

Our main concern is not so much to know the final definite 
measure and end as to use the waning time of the Lord's ap- 
pointment in passively fulfilling His will. Old age doubtless 
has its divine purpose in glorifying the God of our lives. How- 
ever feeble and impotent the physical powers may grow, as 
compared with the vigor of years gone by, yet in the patient 
waiting on the Lord there may be one blessing and a happy 
example of service in His name. If some fruit in old age ap- 
pears, the greater is the power of grace. To come to the end 
in peace is the Christian hope. 

At any time now for me, may come the happy release. The 
call to the laborers at the end of the day is to give them their 
wages — "to every man a penny." It is indeed my constant duty 
to stand on the watch, in obedience to the admonition, "Be ye 
also ready." And now in this frame of mind with firm faith, 
there need be no occasion for alarm or uneasiness because the 
messenger shall sooner or later — and soon at the latest — be sent 
with the call at the end of my life's day. No reflections this 
side of death, however, can solve the universal mystery beyond. 
Each one must await its unfolding as an individual experience ; 
and this brings to nature more or less instinctive dread. But 
the way to look at it now, at my advanced age is not to regard 
it as a dreadful thing to die. If the end of the day comes when 
the work is done, the ready servant enters gladly into rest. 



372 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



This, in faith, courage and hope, by divine grace, is what gives 
us comfort and peace. 

My chief regret is that my life has been so comparatively 
barren of fruits, and that the results have been so much smaller 
than could be wished. And yet, considering the unpropitious 
start, there is surely much indebtedness for divine favor and 
help in what was accomplished. At no point now within pres- 
ent memory could more have been done with the same light 
and convictions of duty. Though there be many shortcomings 
and occasions of conscious failure which with my past experi- 
ence and present concepts, could have been very much im- 
proved or turned to better account, — yet as to a faithful desire 
at the time .and with the ability given then in the same circum- 
stances, only small difference could be expected, in going 
through another such trial. Imperfections, mistakes and fail- 
ures are deeply deplored; and wrong-doings, falls and sins are 
sincerely repented of ; while my prayers also have been that the 
Lord would forgive the failures, so as to complete the imper- 
fect, prosper the good intent, make full what fell short of its 
great end ; and finally crown all with the fullness of Christ — 
thus making all things work together for good, to His glory 
and for our gracious reward. Fully conscious of this great 
need, I humbly leave all the sowing, the unskilled culture, and 
the final heavenly harvest to the overruling love and power of 
our heavenly Father, in Christ Jesus our Lord. My work in 
the main has been indeed rather commonplace, and so far as 
there has been fruit, nothing remarkable stands out above 
many servants. 

Eminence on life's roll as that word goes has not been my 
chief aim; nor has it been my satisfying attainment. But to 
work up from a low position towards a higher condition for 
greater usefulness at least an average grade of man, was an 
early and deepseated purpose. It was however more for the 
sake of my mother and sisters and later my family than for my- 
self personally; all for Christ and quite as much for general 
service in my day and generation in the church and civil so- 



HOMEWARD AT FOURSCORE AND FOUR. 



373 



ciety^ It was no small success indeed, for a poor boy to have 
started with a very meager slice of common school advantage 
and with no pecuniary means, and in a rush of short time, pre- 
paring for college in only seventeen weeks' study of Latin and 
Greek, having been barely admitted though unsolicited to the 
Freshman class (on probation) ; and from sheer necessity, in 
order to get self-supporting means, losing weeks and months 
ofFtimes, of college attendance each year ; yet holding fair rank 
in his class, and graduating with next to the first honor. These 
losses had to be made up, so as to maintain class standing, be- 
sides rising above the low grade held at the start, while pre- 
paring also his own meals for several years, and ending only 
half a point in the average grade of the whole course, below 
the highest class honor of one who had not been so handieap- 
ed at the beginning. The real difference some thought, be- 
tween the first and second honor borne off on that commence- 
ment day was perhaps in favor of the graduate who stood in 
the next to the top place. In general, the grade here as else- 
where, has been only fair average, rather than a distinguished 
first. Some other vocation might have made a more brilliant 
record than the ministerial calling. First rate lawyer, or politi- 
cian, or financier, or business man, however were not to be com- 
pared to serving in medium rank or lower the gospel ministry. 
Rather a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, than conspicu- 
ous position or great distinction elsewhere. Commonplace, 
medium, or low in general work for the church was my choice, 
and always a willing service. 

As to different plans and purposes, undertaken or projected, 
there was not always the degree of hoped for success ; but the 
efforts were often in a measure even thwarted. Thus it seems 
as if mine, in regard to some of these, were indeed a mistaken 
calling or ill-timed design. Yet the failures or defeats may 
have been only divine preparations perhaps for the main suc- 
cess otherwise not yet to be fully realized, that is to be reached 
under some other persons in the order of Providence. Take 
for instance the unfulfilled purpose of furthering educational 



374 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



work planned for western Pennsylvania, long very dear to me. 
Or, the several publication schemes, and my prevented but 
promising work in the mission at Washington. Some growing 
though later results already in my life time are appearing from 
seed thus sown. The harvest will follow in the Lord's due time. 

Doubtless there was good reason for the providential check- 
rein so often drawn on me for steady holding. From the low 
pressure of the early condition of childhood and youth an un- 
due rebound afterwards might have been too much for one's 
good. For instance, on entering college, the lowest seat in 
the class seemed good enough for the probationer not well pre- 
pared as a Freshman. Even that grade was thankfully held in 
sincere self-judgment as high enough for the start. No just 
claim then promised more — in fact, so much could hardly have 
been expected. But ending the course with a top round mark 
of the ladder at graduation, in a condensed period short indeed 
as to years from the common school start, while others had full 
term of years in which to do the same work, was at least a 
credit. Honors in the class and the literary society came unex- 
pectedly in the limited period of that course. More than or- 
dinary success too in teaching the Classical High School, and 
the subsequent years in the tutorship of the college taking 
along also the seminary studies at the same time ; besides ex- 
ceptional advance in the ministry in half a dozen missions, 
and average general popular favor while editing on several 
church papers — all these might have led to personal vanity, if 
not held in by check. 

Uncurbed prosperity and rapid advancement, giving fur- 
ther, one might have thought, as some one here and there is 
met often do think that all the work of the church would fail 
in great measure, if he were not prime manager. No one in 
fact, let it be learned, is an absolute necessity for the success 
of God's work. One man being laid off does not stop the 
harvest. The backset of some years therefore relegating a 
worker like Paul, or Luther, imprisoned, to comparative re- 
tirement was perhaps needed to mellow undue aspirations. 



HOMEWARD AT FOURSCORE AND FOUR. 



375 



These were indeed sufficiently fed and flattered in repeated of- 
fers of advancement to places supposed to be high in outward 
earthly conditions. Possibly for more good, the bright sun- 
shine of distinction may at times better be shaded a while for 
the sweeter enjoyment of the evening radiance in the peaceful 
setting day. 

This record is now made instead of some more pretentious 
and costly monument. Yet it may be mentioned, that by an 
unexpected extra dividend, fortunately, of a machine com- 
pany's stock bought some years ago with the insurance money 
received for the incendiary burning of our barn and crops, a 
suitable burial lot and plain mausoleum was lately provided as 
a final resting place for the remains of myself and family in the 
Green Hill cemetery, Waynesboro, Pa. It fronts on South Po- 
tomac avenue extended. In that modest structure of lasting 
Barre Vermont granite, marked only with the simple sign, the 
cross, of our faith, we shall wait the resurrection call. 

"There sweet be my rest till He bids me arise, 
To hail Him in triumph, descending the skies." 

The town Herald says: 

THE RUSSELL MAUSOLEUM. 

ONE OF THE FINEST RESTING PLACES FOR THE DEAD IN THE VALLEY. 

Rev. Dr. Russell has improved his finely located burial lot in the 
Green Hill Cemetery with a costly Mausoleum that adds much to the 
high artistic beauty of that city of the dead. It is of the best Barre 
Vermont granite, in size 13.6 feet long, 10 feet wide and 8 feet above 
ground, on a 5 foot concrete foundation. It contains over 60 tons of 
granite blocks, 16 inches thick each way and without joints the whole 
length. The roof is three massive plinths, hammer-dressed, weighing 
15 tons ; the cap-piece, fitted in accurately prepared groves to the sides, 
laps over them so as never to need repair for ages. At the entrance 
are two dressed pilasters with bases and capital forming the door frame 
eight feet high. The folding doors are of heavy brass plates with grill 
work openings, on the inside of which are hung thick plate glass shut- 
ters. On the front gable, finely dressed, is a large Roman cross; and 



37<5 



FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 



extending above the door on the range plate in large bas relief letters is 
the family name "Russell." 

The whole structure is massive, plain, appropriate, beautiful, and 
there is nothing like it hereabouts. Inside, the finish, also rock dress- 
ed, is a vestibule nine feet square, and at the further end are the trans- 
verse catacombs, for receiving the caskets of the entombed remains to 
be hermetically sealed. These are framed in black slate bases and sides. 
The beautiful front panels are of highly polished white marble, having 
the names of the whole family, the living and the dead, engraved in 
the marble slabs in gilt and enduring gold. In a crypt below, already 
rest the sacred remains removed from the church graveyard, of the 
mother, unmarried sister, and the younger brother, who died in 1871. 

Finally a wish is here most heartily recorded, that my fun- 
eral be in harmony with my quiet life, and that my burial be 
private. "Let no awkward squad fire over my grave," nor any 
lying eulogy be uttered at my resting place. It is hard to find 
a truthful obituary; let none be published about my inperfect 
life. What has been incidentally told in the foregoing story, 
is not so much boastful, as intended only to be true. Flattering 
words of friends, or detractions of enemies will not change the 
conditions of the rest beyond. My times were in the Lord's 
hands, and my redeemed soul is committed to His faithful 
care and keeping. 

Jesus, just when dying for the salvation of mankind closed 
His work in the words: It is finished. My work however, 
now and at every stage through the years, is, alas, not finished. 
At this end it must be written of the best of it, that it is imper- 
fect, defective and incomplete. But my comfort and plea must 
be found in that other word of Scripture, "Ye are complete 
in Him." The mercy and goodness of our Lord accepts what 
is laid upon the altar of sacrifice. To this He adds the full 
gift of eternal life. 

My late report to the Mercersburg Classis for the last year 
is a possible brief farewell. In the name of the Lord. Amen ! 
As to ministerial work done, there is not much to be said. But 
if blessings and mercies were enumerated the list would be 
long as life eternal can sing the numbers. 



HOMEWARD AT FOURSCORE AND FOUR. 



377 



Increasing years climbing over the fourscore mark, the high- 
est mentioned Scripture measure given to human life, together 
with other circumstances, naturally limit the conditions of ac- 
tive official service. Especially as you know, for several years 
past, no pastoral duties regularly claim attention. Yet as far 
as willingness goes it is never too late to do good service. Nor 
am I beyond the "dead line" too far to engage in word and 
deed for the work of the Master. It is counted a high privi- 
lege to be called in any degree to bring forth fruit in old age. 

Although having no parish work, yet the ministerial com- 
mission still keeps me under the constitution while life lasts. 
Hence calls to service in the exercise of official functions, if 
not many or continuous, have still been heeded. Assisting at 
sacraments and at funerals, as well as preaching the Word 
when special occasions called at least ten or more times dur- 
ing the year, is about all that can be here mentioned. This of 
course leaves out results. 

Writing for the church papers has also been a voluntary 
service ; for which a dozen prominent men lately sent me flat- 
tering acknowledgments — all unsolicited. For none of my 
late work was there any pecuniary reward received. My health 
has been such, that more of the same kind of work could have 
been done, had opportunities offered. A moderate income 
from economically guarded means, has given my family suf- 
ficient resources for a comfortable living, without call for min- 
isterial relief in old age, leaving also the usual tithe for benevo- 
lence. While no manner of aid has ever been given me from 
the church, even from my early college days of struggle, with 
no beneficiary help, till now, it is my privilege to make some 
judicious distribution of the Lord's portion. Many calls be- 
sides for more and larger contributions had to be refused, be- 
cause of restricted ability for larger liberality. 

Thankful for manifold benefits and boundless grace in the 
past of a long life, with continued present blessings ; and look- 
ing for full pardon for all shortcomings and sins, the free 
promise of salvation in Christ our divine Lord gives me faith 



37^ FOUR SCORE AND MORE. 

to finish my course with joy. When the last sunset of our pil- 
grim days shall end our earthly life, may we all, my brethren, 
in the General Assembly, finish our reports made complete in 
Christ our Saviour ! Yours in Grace. 

What has been written from memory, in this desultory and 
unadorned story, in the odd intervals since my later birthdays, 
may not be just what could be wished by all who read it. With 
more time and proper care to have set these memorabilia in 
classified order, aided by references to records from which to 
draw more fully the data, perhaps some parts to great advan- 
tage, might be either modified, or omitted ; and others of more 
general interest could have taken their places. Much indeed in 
cursory review has been cut out without material loss. 

If only a chapter could be written from beyond the tomb, 
about what is to be found on that side, after the experience of 
an equal period, it would make up for much of what is less 
acceptable ! 

But to the future seeker after the truth of such historical 
facts as are herein incidentally contained there may be found 
real value for corrections of other people's mistaken records. 
This rehearsal, given in large charity and with little personal 
bias and feeling about "Men and Things in My Path," will be 
judged by those who live after the record has been made up. 
It is now for the use of my immediate family, at whose re- 
quest it was chiefly prepared. They cherish me here and will 
guard my memory, till they follow me to the home of other 
blessed ones gone before to glory, where we shall all meet in 
the presence of our dear Lord, to praise Him forever ! 

Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, ac- 
cording to Thy word. For he trusteth in Thee. Amen. 



INDEX 



Apple, Thomas G., Dr., 72, 74, 126, 

142, 162, 256. 
Baetty, Thomas, 170. 
Bahner, F. F., Rev., xi. 
Baird, Thomas D., 76. 
Bausman, B., Dr., 148, 186. 
Berg, Dr., 90. 
Besore, Catharine, 8. 
Bockius, Charles, 224. 
Bomberger, J. H., Dr., 125, 256. 
Books written by Dr. Russell, 164 to 

167. 

Buchanan, James, Pres. of the U. S., 
69. 

Butler, Dr., 289. 
Callender, Dr., 169. 
Clark, Alexander, Dr., 141. 
Coblentz, Joseph, Dr., 70. 
Conrad, W. Rev., 234. 
Cort, Cyrus, 241, 328. 
Cort, Lucian, Rev., 128. 
Craig, J. T., Elder, 123. 
Dale, Albert, Rev., 137. 
Davis, Elder, 163. 

Diagnothian Literary Society and its 
members, 64. 

Dieffenbacher, D. S., Elder, 170, 238. 

Douglas, Robert, Rev., 109. 

Eastern Board of Publication, 146, 217. 

Easton, Captain H., 138. 

Evangelical Reformed Church, Fred- 
erick, Md., 24. 

Evans, Barbara, 237. 

Elder, Mrs., and her School, 25. 

Fisher, S. R. Dr., 94, 124, 141, 145, 
147, 151, 155, 186. 

Frederick City, Md., 22. 

Freshmen Commencement, 69. 

Funeral Addresses of Dr. George B. 
Russell, xiii, xvi. 

Geisy, S. H., Dr., 112. 

Gerhart, E. V., Dr., 142, 149. 

General Synod, 331. 

German Immigrants, 35. "* 

German Church, 6th and Smithfield 
Sts., Pittsburg, Pa., 108, 110. 

Goethian Hall, 67. 

Good, J. H., Dr., 159, 256. 



Goodrich, Rev., 128. 

Grace Church, Pittsburg, Pa. 

Building Committee, 121. 

Antecedent History, before, 107. 

Opposes new mission, 169. 

Sold for $50,000, 173. 
Gray, W. C, Dr., 141. 
Griffith, G. F., Elder, 288. 
Hacke, N. P., Rev. Dr., 137, 139, 233, 

324. 

Harbaugh, Henry, Dr., 111, 121, 145, 

147, 253. 318. 
Harvard College, 214. 
Hassler, Jacob, Rev., 138. 
Heiner, Elias, Dr., 95. 
Heisler, D. Y., Rev. Dr., 138, 184. 
Helfenstein, Jacob, Rev., 223. 
Hiester, J. E., 304. 
Higbee, E. E., Dr., 125, 153. 
Hoy, W. E., Dr., Missionary to China, 

167. 

Irish Immigrants, 34. 

Johnson, Joseph F., 203. 

Kahler, Robert, Rev., 226. 

Keen, Edward O., Rev., xi. 

Kefauver, Lewis H., 71. 

Kelley, James, 204. 

Kemerer, David, Rev., 108, 110. 

Kieffer, Moses, Dr., 122, 257, 316. 

Kilbourn, John, Prof., 128. 

Knepper, David, Elder, 314. 

Koplin, A. B., Rev., 205, 211. 

Kremer, Amos, Rev., 145. 

Kunkel, Mrs., 163, 173. 

Leitersburg, Maryland, 9. 

Leonard, Henry, 208, 219. 

Levan, F. K., Rev., 202, 206. 

Levan, John P., 231. 

Limberg, C. A., Rev., 176. 

Literary Societies, 63. 

Little, P. W., Dr., 66. 

Love, John W., Rev., 155. 

MaCauley, Charles F., Rev. Dr., 26, 

77, 80. 
Mease, Dr., 161, 222. 
Meister, P. A. B., Rev., 289. 
Mercersburg Review, 124, 142. 
Middletown, Maryland, 75. 



R-26 



380 FOUR SCORE 

Miller, Rufus W. Introduction to 
"Four Score and More," 8 to 15, 
163. 

"Mission Tidings," 161. 
Moore, Lewis, 170. 
Mormons, 61. 

Musser, Cyrus J., Dr., 149, 156. 

Nevin, Alfred, Dr., 26. 

Nevin, J. W., Dr., 64, 68, 75, 88, 93, 

141, 149, 163, 190, 2ii, 254, 256, 

265. 

Nevin, Wm. M., Prof., 76, 145. 

Noll, Rev., 163. 

Oellig, Dr., Physician, 12. 

Orphans' Home, Frederick, Md., 26. 

Peightel, I. N., Rev.,, xi. 

Penn, John, Sr., 224. 

Penn, John, Jr., 224. 

Pessavant, W. A., Rev. Dr., 106, 243. 

Phillips, Samuel, Rev., 127. 

Pittsburg Synod, 212, 217, 224. 

Pittsburg Synod and Eastern Board of 
Publication, 154, 155. 

Pittsburg Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, 118. 

Poetry, 130 to 136. 

Presbyterian General Assembly, 86. 

Prugh, John H., Dr., 127. 

Publication Board, 187. 

Rahauser, Frederick, Rev., 137. 

Rahauser, George F., Elder, 230. 

Reiter, Caroline Amelia (wife of George 
B. Russell), 130, 136. 

Reiter, George, 137. 

Reiter, Mrs. George, 180. 

Riddle, D. M., Dr., 106. 

Roberts, W. H., Rev. Dr., 175. 

Ruby, G. W., Prof., 76. 

Rupley, Dr., 257. 

Rust, Dr., 257. 

Russell, C, Rev., 8, 130, 137. 
Russell, Christian, 8. 
Russell, John, 8. 
Russell, George B. 

Refers to past life, four years of age 

to eighty-four, 3. 
States health conditions at eighty- 
four, 6. 

Gives history of parentage and birth, 
and birth-place, 7, 9. 

Relates earliest recollection of birth- 
place and home in Maryland, 9. 

Describes first remembered funeral 
and awful mystery of death, 10 



AND MORE. 

Russell, George B. 

Describes first day at school at four 
years of age as visitor, 11. 

Relates first lesson in "mine and 
thine," 11. 

Recalls first sickness, "the yellow 
janders," 12. 

Experiences deceitfulness for the 
first time, 12. 

Receives first lesson from mother in 
patience, • 12. 

Relates first ride on horseback, and 
other rides following, 13. 

Experiences first misfortune, pov- 
erty, and removal from happy 
home, 14. 

Moves to public house on the great 
"National Pike," 16. 

Sees cock-pit for the first time, and 
describes heartless scene, 17. 

Describes stage-coaches beiore day of 
railroads, 18. 

Describes "pony post," 18. 

Sympathizes and cares for friendless 
sufferer, 19. 

Describes slavery, 20. 

Offended and feeling injured at five 
years old, first lesson, 22. 

Witnesses execution of murderer, 23. 

Falls in with rough children and pack- 
age is stolen from him — first im- 
pression of another commandment 
broken, 23. 

Helping mother to provide for chil- 
dren — first experience as merchant, 
24. 

Receives pastor's blessing along with 
brothers and sisters, 25. 

Describes first day at School in Fred- 
erick, Md., 25. 

Left Frederick, 183 1, 26. 

Preached special sermon in behalf of 
Frederick Orphans' Home, 26. 

Moved to Cove Gap, but failure fol- 
lowed, 28. 

Hunting, and wild animals, 29. 

Snake killing, 30. 

Witnesses capture of runaway slave, 
cruel, 32. 

Relates incidents of dogs owned by 

the family, 32. 
Moved to "Little Cove" on neglected 

farm, 35. 



INDEX. 



Russell, George B. 
Walked long distances for necessi- 
ties of life, 36. 
Fishing, 37. 

Gathering and cutting wood, 39. 

Learning to wear the yoke, 39. 

Bidding good-bye to childhood, 39. 

Enduring the yoke, 40 

Sent out to work for a living, 41. 

Received harsh treatment from old 
people for three years, 42. 

Attended three months school in 
three years, 43. 

Receive first wages, 46. 

Influenced by singing of weaver's ap- 
prentice, 46. 

Determines to be faithful to service, 
47- 

Escapes from several accidents, 49. 
Working upward, in a store, 52. 
Relates Sunday School experiences, 
52- 

Cabinet-making for a year and a 
half, 53- 

Starting for more education, 55. 
Devote seventeen weeks to Latin anr 1 

Greek to prepare for college, 55. 
Boarding on 69 cents a week, 56. 
Painting and peddling books daring 

vacation, 58. 
Urged by sister to go through college 

course, 59. 
Takes second honors in graduation 

class, 59. 

Teaches High School in Maryland, 
59- 

Receives license to preach, 60. 

Receives high marks and commenda- 
tion at college, 61. 

Relates efforts of Mormons at reor- 
ganizing and readjusting, 62. 

Experiences in leading mission Sun- 
day School and first attempt at 
singing, 63. 

Was member of Diagnothian Literary 
Society, 64. 

Describes Goethian and Diagnothian 
Halls, 66. 

Relates incidents during "Freshman 
Commencement," and college life, 
69. 

Aids college friends during sickness, 
73- 



381 

Russell, George B. 

Teaching in the High School, testi- 
monials, etc., Middletown, Md., 75. 

Rescue child from drowning, 78. 

Elected Tutor in Marshall College, 
80. 

Studying in the Seminary, 80. 

Suffering from typhoid fever, 83. 

Relates first oath in Court — swear- 
ing to naturalization papers, 83. 

Writes of good influence of Dr. 
Nevin over him while a student and 
in after years, 88, 92. 

Becomes Sub-Rector in Franklin & 
Marshall College, 94. 

Led toward the Ministry, 98. 

Examined, October, 1853, at Phila- 
delphia Synod, 99. 

Called suddenly to Pittsburg Mission, 
99- 

Ordained, Feb. 13, 1854, IO °' 

Undergoes ordeal in leading public 
worship, 102. 

Willing to take the yoke, and ven- 
tures,, 104. 

Meet Pittsburg ministers and new 
friends, 106. 

Relates antecedent history of Grace 
Church, 107. 

Receive encouraging letter from Dr. 
Harbaugh, 1 12. 

Receive kind and sympathetic letter 
from Dr. Geisy, 113. 

Organized congregation (May 13, 

1854) , 113. 

Organized Sunday School (March 12, 

1855) , US- 

Choir organized, 116. 

Visited by cholera scourge, 117. 

Building new church, 118. 

Received noble help from people, 118. 

Secured majority of funds by hard, 
laborious canvas, enduring many 
hardships, 119, 120. 

Dedicated Grace Church, December , 
1857, 121. 

Resigned Grace Church, after eight 
years, 123. 

Left Grace Church in great pros- 
perity, 124. 

Editing "Pastor's Helper," "Mer- 
cersburg Review," and other pub- 
lications, 134. 



382 FOUR SCORE 

Russell, George B. 

Lose valuable printing stock by 

Chambersburg fire, 124. 
Acts as second man, groomsman, 

"bridesmaid," etc., 128. 
Leaves boarding houses to others, 

129. 

Married, Nov. 24, 1859. 

Rejoices at birth of daughter, 137. 

Held funeral services for Roman 
Catholic, 137. 

Preached English sermons to Ger- 
man congregations, 138. 

Experiences some results of preaching 
efforts, 138, 139, 140. 

Relates faithful labors of helpmeet, 
137. 

Spends twenty years editing, publish- 
ing and preaching, 141. 

Publishes Mercersburg Review, 141. 

Quotes "Review" contract, 142. 

Edits and publishes "The Pastor's 
Helper," 145. 

Forced to transfer "Pastor's Helper" 
to Eastern Board, 146. 

Present original plans for Almanac, 
147. 

Elected "Book Editor," 148, 186. 
Collected $9,000 for Publication 

Board, 148. 
Publish various books, 148. 
Elected editor of "The Messenger," 

149, 150. 

Quotes important announcement, 149. 

Resigned after four years, 151. 

Editing on "The Messenger," after 
twenty years, 155. 

Ceased relations with "The Mes- 
senger" after about three years, 
156. 

Editing "The Western Missionary" 
before "The World" was, 158. 

Elected President of Synod, 159. 

Wrote articles for "The Christian 
World," 161. 

Writes first book, "The Ripe Har- 
vest," 163, 190. 

Writes "Creed and Customs of the 
Reformed Church," 163. 

Writes "Biography of Dr. N. P. 
Hacke," 163. 

Writes "Jesus in the Home," 163, 
164. 



AND MORE. 

Russell, George B. 

Writes "Four Score and More," 
167. 

Organized Sunday School and con- 
gregation in Allegheny, 169. 

Resigned and left Allegheny, 171. 

Relates sad story of Allegheny 
Church, 171. 

Proposed Resolutions and Greeting 
to Reformed Church in France, 
173. 

States his views relative to Union 

Movement, 174, 175. 
Serving as Secretary of General 

Synod's Board of Orphans' Homes, 

178. 

Presided at dedicatory services of 
Orphans' Home, Butler, Pa., and 
quotes his address, 181, 182. 

Editing for Publication Board, 188. 

Quarantined for four weeks on ac- 
count of smallpox, 189. 

Loses good' friend by death of Dr. 
Harbaugh, 190. 

Engaged in free mission work in 
Delaware, and successfully, 192, 
195- 

Relates history of St. John's Church, 
West Philadelphia, and his efforts 
and success, 196 to 200. 

Receives vote of thanks from Phila- 
delphia Classis, 200. 

Resigns and moves to Pittsburg, 201. 

Plans for Educational work, 201. 

Buys college for $1,500, 202. 

Declines offer to be President of col- 
lege, 203. 

Withdrew from Westmoreland Clas- 
sis to St. Paul Classis, 203. 

Relates failure of college, 203. 

Opposed in new college project and 
great opportunity lost, 205. 

Relates history of the Wilhelm leg- 
acy, 205. 

Edits and manages "The Reformed 

Era," 216. 
Ill-treated by transferral of "Era" 

to Eastern Board of Publication, 

218. 

Writes for "The World," 222. 
Takes charge of fifth mission, 230. 
Bought property, gathered funds and 
altered building for chapel, 231. 



INDEX. 



383 



Russell, George B. 

Resigned fifth mission (Zion, East 
End, Pittsburg), after four years, 
232. 

Preaching in Kittanning, 237. 

Preaching in Baltimore, St. Paul's 
Church, 238. 

Discovers material in Altoona, La- 
trobe, Pleasant Unity, etc., 242. 

Returned to the West, 245. 

Sent to General Synod of the Dutch 
Reformed Church, 246. 

Formed General Synod, 1863, 251. 

Takes part in great debate at Day- 
ton, 255. 

Produces good effect among German 
brethren by fairness, 262. 

Relates facts regarding Ursinus 
School, etc., 269. 

Accepted mission work at Washing- 
ton, 274. 

Relates bad effect of Special Execu- 
tive Committee, 285, 286. 

Relates history of German Church 
property and efforts to regain 
rightful property, 286. 

Visiting President Hayes and Presi- 
dent McKinley, and other friends 
in Washington, 289. 

Resignation and removal from Wash- 
ington, 291. 

Called to be President of Palatinate 
College, 293. 

Succeeded in placing school in flour- 
ishing condition, 297. 

Suffers by mistakes of the Board, 
298. 

Quotes action of the Board, 303. 

Resigns from Palatinate, 305. 

Falsely charged with robbing of 
bank, 309. 

Returned to Waynesboro, 311. 

Preaching at Mont Alto, 311, 312. 

Repairs and dedicates old church a 
Mont Alto, 311. 

Edits on Reformed Church Messen- 
ger, 1895-1899, 315. 

Joins in Church Project, 318. 

Describes fires and results, 320. 

Relates some appeal cases, "322. 

Saved parsonage from sheriff sale, 
327. 

Appeals to General Synod anfl ap- 
peal is sustained, 331 to 339. 



Russell, George B. 

Forgives and forgets, 339. 
Thrived by industry and economy, 
34i. 

Relates history of financial invest- 
ments, contributions, and hard- 
ships, 341. 

Relates history of calls and over- 
tures, 348. 

Relates history of German Rebellion 
in Seminary, 357. 

Relates history of ecclesiastical meet- 
ings, 361. 

Prepares resting place for himself 

and family, 375. 
Describes Russell Mausoleum, 375. 
Sets memorabilia in order regarding 

"men and things," 378. 
Awaits call to "Come up Higher," 

378. 

Santee, Elder, 146. 

Schaeffer, D. I., Rev., 244. 

Schaeffer, W. C, Dr., 306. 

Schaff, Philip, Dr., 75, 82, 85, 87, 94, 

140, 142, 143, 144, 358. 
Scott, R. A., Col., 241. 
Siebert, Christian, Elder, 176. 
Schneck, Dr., 83. 
Schmaltz, John H., Rev., 24. 
Society Halls, 65. 

St. Paul's Orphans' Home, 176, 177. 

Steiner, Dr., 64. 

Stern, Dr., 257. 

Stake, Rev., 263. 

Stewart, John, General, 241. 

Syester, Judge, 72. 

"The Pastor's Helper," 123, 145. 

Thomas, John H., Hon., 71. 

Valandigham, V. L., Hon., 263, 264. 

Voight, Father, 234. 

Weber, John. Wm, Rev., 108. 

Whitmer, A. C, Rev., xi. 

Wilhelm, The family, 206. 

Wiestling, G. B., Col., 1, 39, 311, 312. 

Williard, G. W., Dr., 256. 

Wingert, Elder, 324. 

Wolf, B., Jr., 105, 232. 

Wolff, B. C, Dr., 96. 

Zacharias, Daniel, Dr., 26, 96, 121. 

Zellers, Louise, 128. 

Zellers, Rev. J., 138. 



i 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



V 



